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web 2.0 was a mistake: alternatives and where a better future would lie
January 20th, 2020
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in the previous post, i described the situation with web browsers, so now it's time to describe the beast that caused this situation: web 2.0.
web 2.0 is usually used to describe the phase after web 1.0, where the design paradigm for sites went from individual users maintaining their own sites to larger sites having users that maintain blogs through the frontends provided by admins, and other users commenting on them.
think blogging platforms, and i'd say all social media falls under this as well, though depending on who you ask they may qualify as web 3.0, as a more extreme version of what web 2.0 brought.
another aspect of web 2.0 perhaps less discussed than social media is the actual change in the type of content hosted by sites: no longer is a site just a bunch of html files, now everything uses javascript, flash, whatever the hell html5 added, webRTC, the list goes on.
these betray the primary conceit behind having a site, and caused hardware to have to try and make up for these missteps in design, usually unsuccessfully.
if you'd like to see a specific case of something that demonstrates a better understanding of what a site should look like, i recommend checking out any and all of the instances associated with the tildeverse (check
https://tildeverse.org for this), this very (ph|b)log being on one of them.
the reasons tilde sites look so different from most of the rest of the web is simple: the kind of philosophy that results in this setup is naturally going to lead to leaner more meaning-dense structure, but there are other ways of improving the internet:
alternatives to web 2.0: unless otherwise mentioned these all count as "antiweb" content.
gopher: the preweb text internet protocol, originally designed to make intranet directories for universities and the like to do as little as possible while remaining useful. the main way i run this site is through gopher, and the main flaw i see with it is a lack of a simple markup format within documents. this is possible using gopher, but only through the kludge of having a document as a gophermap--technically a directory. in general (though i can't quantify this) the protocol very much shows its origins, and not in a wholly positive way.
gemini: "intended to be simple, but not necessarily as simple as possible. instead, the design strives to maximise its 'power to weight ratio', while keeping its weight within 'acceptable' limits.", and intended to be "very privacy conscious."
this way you can have expressive pages and capability for saving files, but nothing huge like streaming. this is a happy medium between gopher's barebones hardcore simplicity and the modern web's bloated hellscape.
finger: another internet protocol, this one with specific purpose: figure out the status of a machine or a particular user on this machine. want to see what your friends over on [FINGER-HOST] are doing? go ahead and check!
this one is lovely because it has one purpose and it does exactly what it says on the tin, and nothing else. certainly not a good way to portray 100% of the information on your site, but it's a nice addon nonetheless.
web 1.0/pure early html (not antiweb): there's a reason i've put this last. i feel that web 1.0 style is primarily helpful for getting people to transition away from web 2.0 (as all modern browsers can render these just fine), and though it may contain all that one needs to get meaning across without being bloated, continuing the use of these web browsers is an antipattern we'll all have to kick if they don't cooperate with this vision of a better internet, and i have a feeling they won't.
others: it's entirely possible--likely, even, that there are other alternative protocols that i haven't mentioned. the point of this post is not to catalogue all of them--though i encourage you to look into it yourself--instead i aim to make this more visible to others, possibly encourage them to start making things for these alternatives mentioned.
if this post inspired you to start making your own antiweb content, or sign up for a tilde and make your own antiweb content there, or you've already done one or both of these, please email me (addr: psii (at) riseup.net) with a link to this post in the body: i'd love to hear from you!
