As we know it? It already has several times. How many of you out there are browsing the web using Gofer? The centralized oligarchcentric web that we know today needs to die and great new things are coming along to take its place. Returned to more sustainable collaborative websites and services. Like the fediverse.
The only solace I take in the enshittification of the web and the resulting rise in prices, is that we might see (be forced into) a return to the small web and an escape from the stranglehold that big tech and social media has had on us for the last 15 years.
If we’re lucky, the late-stage capitalism effect of ruining companies long term futures for short term gains might happen to entire industries instead of companies.
I see a lot of potential for it to push people back to the small web too. Lots of people becoming interested in personal blogs lately, decentralized social media, the whole indie web movement, etc.
Just started mine! In plain html/txt. Just for fun. Eventually get rss up and running.
Hell yeah! I've been blogging for a couple years but I just use Micro.blog. I'd like to switch to something completely self hosted one of these days though.
nice! I took a look at all the options....
and decided that its all too much. wordpress get hacked daily. writefreely wouldn't install. And some of the other centralized services kinda suck. So im back to old: nginx with a director filled with txt files haha.
Ill publish as time goes on and by interest. Ill take a look at micro.blog too. But im thinking I might create a neocities at some point just for the fun of it.
Neocities isn't a bad option tbh. I haven't used it in a minute but if you're thinking about neocities I really really liked bearblog.dev too!
I just spun up my own Ghost blog, being self-hosted and interacts with the Fediverse. Plus it's pretty without me needing to know how.
I've been really curious about Ghost lately! I set it up in a container on pikapods not too long ago but I ended up staying on Micro.blog. Something I really liked that I had no idea about beforehand was that they have their own little Discover feed over there right? It felt too serious for me when I mostly run an old school link/microblog kinda blog and it seems SO optimized for mailing lists and subscribers
Yeah, there is a lot of focus on getting your site out, but I just ignore all that part. I just wanted a nice place to self-host my travels without having to think much about it and it seems to fit that bill. But yeah, there is a place to discover other feeds and to comment on other people's posts from the Fediverse and what not.
I got 1gbps internet (symmetrical) and a raspberry pi cluster… running my own Wordpress never made more sense… AND that botch should scale!
I've been seeing a slow but steady movement that direction too
You got links? Ive been working on something that fits right into this, too. It’s time, y’all.
Definitely. The conditions that created this version of the web have been gone for some time now. We've gone from connections that were temporarily and required hours to download a few minutes of postage stamp sized video. To always on connections capable of streaming multiple HD streams faster than real time in both directions.
For my part I'm also looking in to purchasing and trying to set up a small Adhoc mesh Halow network and running a few services on it for myself and any others in the neighborhood that are interested. A small, free (after the hardware) anarchist wireless network. 16mbps can do a lot with simple services, etc.Plus, if a number of people in the area decided to adopt and contribute more nodes to the mesh, you could go faster still.
That sounds like a fantastic way to go. You might also look at meshtastic.
It's a much different use case, being for text messaging and stuff like that only. But, while it may be low bandwidth, it's still incredibly interesting.
https://reticulum.network/ is also pretty good for small info packets. Does a LOT more than meshtastic...but its VERY difficult to set up. Or at least it was for me.
Its a pipe dream but having small internet without a major ISP would be fantastic. But it will never happen as it is. Friends are thinking of creating a meshnet though just for fun.
I jumped on Meshtastic but found it got too congested with noise in a medium-sized city making it difficult to get much out there. Switched to Meshcore and have had a much better time communicating. Seattle's full on made it equivalent to SMS, which makes me jealous. But YMMV 🤷🏼♂️
What preset were you using at the time? I know that longfast is not the best preset for larger networks that have a lot of users.
Personally, open source matters to me much more than the speed or congestion or whatever, which is why I chose meshtastic. Because the mesh core, foam applications are not open source.
Until there is an open source version, I absolutely refuse to touch it. I know that the underlying software is open source, but without having open source interfaces, I'm still refusing to touch it.
Yes, the bandwidth would be the damper there. It's great for transmitting just a little bit of data, long distances. But for any sort of bigger data we transmit regularly on phones and desktop. It becomes unfeasible, even low resolution images.It definitely has a range benefit, though that's for sure.I think fellow Missourian Jeff Geerling had a video out a while back where he talked about using it to contact people below his flight on the way to open sauce.
Back to dial up internet and BBS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
The 90-minute live demonstration featured the introduction of a complete computer hardware and software system called the oN-Line System or, more commonly, NLS, which demonstrated for the first time many of the fundamental elements of modern personal computing, including windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor.
In 1968
How many of you out there are browsing the web using Gofer?
Gopher predated the Web.
I do agree that there have been pretty major changes in the way websites worked, though. I'm not hand-coding pages using a very light, Markdown-like syntax with <em></em>, <a href=""></a>, and <h1></h1> anymore, for example.
<blink>Welcome to my web page under construction</blink>
That depends on how you define the web. If you only call the web the web when it was named the web and not what it was before it was named the web. Then yes you're correct that was before the web. The question is, is that a semantic or significant difference? ARPANET was still a web of interconnected systems. For an old goober like myself.who was using FidoNet net back in the mid 80s. And the actual internet in the late 80s, early 90s. I definitely remember Gophering on the Internet. Plenty of places still maintained gopher directories till the mid 90s.
BBS ARE THE WEB GUYS
The community noticeboard at the general store is the web! /s
Gopher was not the original protocol of the web but an alternative to HTTP/hypertext. It didn't get the same traction, however, and has practically been dead for decades.
Why Gofer when Gemini?
I sympathize, but Gopher is designed against hypertext (inline links in text). It is impossible to have e.g. Wikipedia transmitted over Gopher.
I would argue that's not quite correct. You can absolutely transfer HTML files over gopher, but you're not going to be viewing it in the gopher program.It was very much designed to be what most people would be more familiar with in concept as an FTP server today, almost. Pretty much all you could view in app were plain text files. and no links between. Everything else was a directory of files to be downloaded.
Gemini is definitely a bit of an inbetween. It does allow for linking between documents, but otherwise keeps everything simple and small, much like Gopher did.
Long ago, when I first got on the Internet, the big social media forum was Usenet. It was a distributed network of instances where users would have an account on a particular instance, where they could subscribe to "newsgroups" dedicated to particular topics. Their instance would broadcast their posts to a newsgroup to all the other instances that were following that newsgroup, so everyone could interact even if they were on different instances.
Then the World Wide Web grew, and centralized sites like Digg and Reddit appeared that handled the same sort of social media. Usenet faded. It's still around, I suppose, though these days last I checked it's largely a mechanism for distributing pirated files.
Someday those centralized sites might also fade. Who knows, maybe a decentralized system like Usenet might grow again to replace it?
The wheel turns.
So Usenet was the first fedi site? Reassuring that the concept predates the current paradigm and still has legs, however niche it is atm.
Sort of. It predated the web, so calling it a "site" is wrong. Just like you can have an email application that's completely separate from your web browser, you can have a Usenet client that's also its own thing. Of course, people made web-based clients as time went on.
Your ISP ran a Usenet server that connected to other Usenet servers. The biggest problem with this system was that your ISP would automatically delete posts past a certain age. Following old threads was a pain.
Google Groups started as a Usenet archive where messages were kept forever. Google bought them and turned it into what it is now.
That's why almost no ISP is offering it anymore. No one made money from it, so dump it, maybe try to squeeze some cash out of those hwo really want it but better just drop it.
No, it was every service replicating all posts in groups it served.
Like FTP mirrors of FOSS software, there are plenty of mirrors of Debian, for example. Except far bigger traffic.
...and YouTube is one of the major reasons. The web's not a fucking TV and if you're using it as a TV you'll get stupid even faster than from watching actual TV.
Wouldn't that depend on what you're watching?
You can watch reality TV on YouTube, or traditional television.
You can watch educational content and documentaries on YouTube, or traditional television.
Hell you can watch some traditional TV shows on YouTube or traditional television.
YouTube is just a platform for hosting content. Now they may have a "better" algorithm compared to traditional television, but that doesn't really change much.
Well, have a look what content is getting the most views. I had no idea someone could be that stupid.
Well, have a look what TV show is getting the highest ratings. I had no idea someone could be that stupid.
I've heard this argument for like 30 years. Everything old is new again.
Aside: what’s the gist of this channel? I’m not really familiar with it but the last few things I’ve seen of it appear to be two brothers communicating to each other via vlogs?
The Green brothers are interesting and thoughtful. They try to be an overall positive influence on the internet, even aside from their vlogbrothers thing.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
