[HN Gopher] A read through the original WorldWideWeb proposal
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A read through the original WorldWideWeb proposal
Author : ahuth
Score : 26 points
Date : 2023-12-13 15:52 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (andrewhuth.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (andrewhuth.substack.com)
| imiric wrote:
| One thing the article doesn't mention, and that's always
| intrigued me of the WWW proposal, is the phase 2 of the project,
| and specifically the first line:
|
| > The creation of new links and new material by readers. At this
| stage, authorship becomes universal.
|
| > The ability of readers to create links allows annotation by
| users of existing data, allows to add themselves and their
| documents to lists (mailing lists, indexes, etc). It should be
| possible for users to link public documents to (for example) bug
| reports, bug fixes, and other documents which the authors
| themselves might never have realised existed. This phase allows
| collaborative authorship. It provides a place to put any piece of
| information such that it can later be found. Making it easy to
| change the web is thus the key to avoiding obsolete information.
| One should be able to trace the source of information, to
| circumvent and then to repair flaws in the web.
|
| It envisioned some kind of a collaborative web where readers were
| also publishers, but it didn't go into much detail. AFAIK this
| phase was never completed, and IMO this is a major reason why the
| web is so centralized today, why users have no control of their
| data, and why it's primarily aimed towards consumers.
|
| Had publishing content been as easy as consuming it was from the
| start, there would've been more tooling built around this
| concept, and publishing content would've been as easy as
| consuming it is today. I.e. we would have had publishing
| equivalents of web browsers, instead of web servers that are only
| meant for the technically literate. New web users would be
| educated that the web is a collaborative tool, and not just for
| consumption, and they would've had tools that would allow them to
| share their data in a granular way. This would've avoided the
| need for early web hosting services like GeoCities to exist, and
| the modern web landscape would've been very different.
|
| This is something that TBL is trying to correct with his Solid
| project, but I think it's too little, too late, as that ship has
| long since sailed. The current way the web works is so ingrained
| in culture, and giant tech corporations now define its direction,
| as long as it benefits their bottom line. Easy web publishing is
| _still_ not native to the web, and users have to rely on 3rd
| parties.
|
| Opera had an interesting project in 2009 with Unite, which
| allowed publishing right from the browser, but it went nowhere
| for some reason. The modern decentralized web movement, a.k.a.
| "web3", is too focused on the technology instead of the user, and
| I don't see it gaining mainstream traction.
|
| In many ways I'm disappointed with how the web turned out. It's
| ruled by corporations, government agencies, and advertisers. It's
| hostile to the user on every turn, and it's literally impossible
| to navigate without software that blocks ads and trackers, which
| tech corporations are also actively fighting.
|
| The sad part is that I'm not sure what the solution might be, or
| if there is one at all. All signals seem to point to an even more
| encroaching and hostile experience in the future.
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