[HN Gopher] Web is Dead: introducing the temporal web
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       Web is Dead: introducing the temporal web
        
       Author : twww
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2021-11-25 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mirror.xyz)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mirror.xyz)
        
       | rchaud wrote:
       | A very, very confusing article that jams together several
       | seemingly unrelated concepts, and makes it hard to understand
       | what the overall point is.
       | 
       | - different sites having different UIs (so?)
       | 
       | - Companies use tools like Intercom chatbots because they don't
       | have the resources to develop them in house (again, so? don't
       | reinvent the wheel)
       | 
       | The case study presented is a crypto wallet, because of course it
       | is. I have yet to see an article from a person with ".eth" in
       | their handle that isn't shilling NFTs, Web3 or something else
       | that's pretty much only for the Ethereum crowd.
       | 
       | The thing about Web 1.0 was that it sold itself. The first time
       | you saw it in action at a friend's house or in a college computer
       | lab, chances are you immediately recognized its value. Whether it
       | was exploring X-files fansites, Shockwave games, or even the
       | original CERN site with its then-novel hyperlinked structure. It
       | was Minitel in full color, with audio and video support
       | (RealPlayer "buffering...." messages aside)
       | 
       | Web3 OTOH doesn't seem to be much besides gauche e-trinkets and
       | dApps that are mostly crypto/NFT stores. Is there a killer app or
       | use case that isn't already served by the actual open web?
        
         | twww wrote:
         | i apparently failed at getting my message across... c'est la
         | vie !
        
           | rchaud wrote:
           | I hope I was not too harsh in my comment. There are a lot of
           | disparate threads in the article. If you wanted to get one
           | point across, what would that be?
           | 
           | Web3 isn't an easy concept to understand because it has 'web'
           | in the name, yet it can't be accessed via the clearweb, only
           | via browser extensions, or mirror sites.
           | 
           | The NFT site "hicetnunc" went down recently, with little to
           | no explanation and people on Twitter recommended going to one
           | of several of its mirrors, all with a different address.
           | Would a regular user go to "amazon.win" if "amazon.com" was
           | down?
           | 
           | There's so much about Web3 that feels shady or prone to
           | malfunctioning at any time, with no communication. I hope you
           | can understand that that aspect of it simply does not
           | reconcile with the 'monetize-first' attitude of its
           | proponents.
        
         | theshadowknows wrote:
         | The very first website I ever saw was at my cousin's house
         | during a visit for Christmas. They had just recently "gotten
         | the online" and he was showing me his favorite site which was
         | an Oprah talk show discussion forum. At first I was like "wow
         | this is stupid" but then he told me that there's discussions
         | for "almost everything" and that you're talking to people all
         | over the world...now I was from a town of about 10,000 people
         | or so and had probably met a thousand people total in my
         | lifetime if that (I think I was 8 or so at the time) so it was
         | mind boggling to me to have the ability to just talk to someone
         | on the other side of the world just by clicking a few icons on
         | a computer screen...I was hooked immediately.
         | 
         | Flash forward years and years and so far I just have not sensed
         | the same magic and awe with things like blockchain "stuff" but
         | it may be that I'm not allowing myself to be mentally agile and
         | open (I'm willing to admit it's a possibility, at least).
        
           | faraaz98 wrote:
           | Law of diminishing returns i guess
        
         | CryptoPunk wrote:
         | Web 3.0 immediately sells itself the first time you make a
         | transfer using your MetaMask account. This is a transaction
         | effected solely from your computer, using no trusted third
         | party intermediary or proprietary financial network. Its appeal
         | is immediately evident.
        
       | dusted wrote:
       | Web is not dead.
        
       | bellyfullofbac wrote:
       | God, maybe I'm dumb despite my beliefs to the contrary, but what
       | is this guy trying to say? Ctrl-F for "temporal":
       | 
       | > web4k aka "the temporal web": user interactions across screen
       | space and time of an immutable conversation
       | 
       | > What do we have?
       | 
       | > * The temporal web with conversation-first interfaces,
       | leveraging decentralized communication protocols.
       | 
       | > * Forcing developers to really think at the isolated-component
       | level, while reducing the surface of worry (remember mobile-
       | first, constraints are a blessing).
       | 
       | > * Making their life simpler (even though they don't want it
       | because... money, you know)
       | 
       | > * And most importantly making users' lives simpler: catering
       | better for their intents and adding outstanding build-in support
       | 
       | That's a lot of bullshit bingo points...
       | 
       | Is it basically a chatbot as a UI?
       | 
       | To misuse his term, I thought "temporal web" was the recognition
       | that the internet you're looking at now is different from
       | yesterday's, because content get added, deleted and changed all
       | the time. A web where you can rewind to "Version from $DATE"
       | would be interesting...
        
         | bellyfullofbac wrote:
         | Addendum: I think booking.com tried this (maybe they still have
         | it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftr9qW8Axiw
         | 
         | But me clicking a button to see the details of my booking and
         | getting transferred to a chat interface where my click was
         | translated to a question with a "processing" progress bar
         | irritated me to no end. And it replies with just a partial info
         | inside a tiny chat bubble instead of having all the info in
         | full screen! Just give me the freaking page with my booking
         | details, godfuckingdamnit!
        
           | twww wrote:
           | interesting, didn't know about the booking experiment
           | 
           | but as i was trying to explain, they missed the point and
           | just created frustration for users
           | 
           | didn't want my article to sound like bullshit, that's why i
           | built a poc to try and explain that it's not about having
           | chatbots, but having entire components in a chronological
           | order of the interactions with a website
           | 
           | in your case the booking details would be easily accessible
           | just by scrolling up for instance
        
       | Nevermark wrote:
       | I have long thought that a doc centric view could unite apps and
       | web much better.
       | 
       | Obviously docs we use every day are doc centric. Although the
       | holy grail of easily embedding and linking docs has not been
       | achieved.
       | 
       | Games and other "session" type interaction should simply be docs.
       | You create a new game session, you could have several. You pick
       | up each session by opening it. You can back up sessions yourself
       | if the app doesn't let you, or you just prefer to do so. You are
       | in "control" of you own data, i.e. game state. (Identity
       | management can allow transferred/leg-up games to be easily
       | differentiated from true one person game accomplishment.)
       | 
       | Accounts are just docs. A doc shared by two owners with data and
       | state that gets appended as it is used. Much easier to have two
       | accounts with your financial exchange or bank, or anyone else if
       | you like, without special custom support for that kind of thing.
       | 
       | Apps, web or native, take a back seat. They can be auto dowloaded
       | as needed. App folders become just caches as docs know what apps
       | or app classes they need.
       | 
       | Most doc creation is simply a duplication of a template with no
       | parameters, or perhaps a simple configuration of
       | creator/viewer/owner/capability parameters. (i.e. an energy
       | utility account.)
       | 
       | Because everything is a doc, users can organize them, back them
       | up, etc. Own their own data.
       | 
       | A lot more thought could go into this. But there is no reason why
       | the code behind different doc types would matter much - native,
       | web, etc. once the limitations of those platforms for this
       | simpler model were ironed out. Why should the user ever have to
       | care or be aware of platform choices?
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-25 23:02 UTC)