[HN Gopher] Neil Gaiman on the future of the internet
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Neil Gaiman on the future of the internet
        
       Author : vitabenes
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2023-11-30 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (calnewport.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (calnewport.com)
        
       | olegious wrote:
       | The large platforms enable millions of eyeballs to be aggregated
       | together to attract advertising dollars. In return, the eyeballs
       | receive an algorithmic feed of bite sized dopamine hits (a Tweet,
       | a short video, an Instagram image, etc). It is easier to attract
       | an audience, is easier to sell ads against this audience, but is
       | this audience as valuable to the creator as Cal's 80K newsletter
       | followers? They're different business models and each has its own
       | place.
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | For blogging to form communities (again'-ish), we're going to
       | need new protocols. I don't think http is the future for growth.
       | The nostalgic internet was a "community," but more because it was
       | a scene made up of other scenes, which each had bars to entry,
       | signalling costs, social proof, status and competence
       | hierarchies, and ultimately, real social networks. Imo, the old
       | internet never disappeared, it just migrated to git.
       | 
       | What we're probably overlooking is that _any_ activity where
       | people can collaborate to make something together at scale is
       | basically magic. I don 't think people will go "back" to blogs
       | because the form will need another zero-to-one moment where
       | people collaborate with words to discover something new.
        
         | jauntywundrkind wrote:
         | I don't have any use why http would be the barrier. Works for
         | matrix, works for ActivityPub, works for seemingly whatever.
         | 
         | I was really looking forward to http2 letting servers push
         | resources to open connections, but alas the browser
         | implementers have yet to get around to extending fetch to
         | enable push observability. I love the idea of new chat messages
         | coming in as http resourced the page just sees. But even
         | without that nice to have, I want real contentions and real
         | argumentation around how or where http isn't enough. It seems
         | so greatly malleable, can be adapted to serve seemingly any
         | scheme. Looking at grpc for example, it's kind of stunning how
         | little has to be added to make a bidirectional streaming rpc
         | system.
        
       | zwieback wrote:
       | Sometimes I wonder if the cozy feeling of the "old" internet so
       | many people are nostalgic for was really just a byproduct of a
       | few enthusiasts gaining an outsize following because the net was
       | financed by universities, governments and the military. Once the
       | unwashed masses and commercial interests joined the party things
       | "went downhill".
       | 
       | You can still blog if you want, you just won't get the automatic
       | exposure.
        
         | prepend wrote:
         | This is where I settled. The net was kind of hard to use so
         | there was a certain kind of user.
         | 
         | Writing blog posts is kind of hard so there weren't a ton.
         | 
         | Then it got easy and everyone is on. So thus the yelling and
         | marginalia.
        
         | stvltvs wrote:
         | The nostalgia I feel is for the experimental DIY vibe and doing
         | stuff for free just because it's fun or you want to contribute
         | to a community. Hustle culture and corporate walled gardens
         | have sucked the fun out of the old web.
        
       | supercanuck wrote:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-11-30 23:01 UTC)