[HN Gopher] The Internet Archive on the future of the web
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The Internet Archive on the future of the web
Author : herbertl
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-03-16 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.protocol.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.protocol.com)
| ppf wrote:
| From a state security perspective, the "Balkanisation" of the
| internet makes perfect sense. You wouldn't allow huge numbers of
| unknown agents from other countries in, to spend their time
| trying to influence your people, yet there is a free and open
| internet with a practically direct connection the population's
| brains, and very little way to know who is doing the influencing.
| hi wrote:
| "We're living in the perpetual present, and that is dangerous."
|
| I love the idea of version control for the internet. We are
| forced to use updates, even if we don't want them. The idea of
| being able to use a site's specific version is very attractive.
| It becomes even more interesting when you think of the internet
| over a much longer time horizon, say 200 years in the future
| where historians can go through all of our historical records.
| Much of this might be lost if we keep it in walled gardens as it
| might be lost forever unless the owners of that data release it.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > We're living in the perpetual present, and that is dangerous.
|
| But my Zen master tells me that is precisely where i want to
| live :)
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > We are forced to use updates, even if we don't want them
|
| This is one of the things I hate most about modern tech. People
| just assume newer = better. And it goes from the functional to
| the aesthetic, too. Not only are we often forced or heavily
| pressured to update, the updates don't just affect
| functionality behind the scenes but also the UI of things we
| use. I can't stand modern UI (and it's not some rosy glasses
| for the good old days of cuneiform). I never understood the
| value of Stallman's philosophy around free software and having
| the freedom to change it until machines I paid for and own
| started getting so many forced updates and downloads. Literally
| as I speak my windows PC just woke up from hibernate because of
| some updates; one major reason why I use the unvalidated
| version instead of giving windows any money if I can avoid it.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Developers are routinely breaking stuff and users have to sit
| and wait for the fix. It is like tracking HEAD. Not every
| user wants to do that.
|
| Not only do we see an assumption that newer equals better but
| we see developers who believe the more activity on a project
| the better. To them, no activity means the project is "dead".
| These developers have no concept of a finished, working
| version that fulfills the user's needs. Perhaps they are
| incapable of producing such a finished product, or derive
| some benefit from keeping a user dependant on them for
| "updates". This is a purely developer perspective, not a user
| perspective. Not all software exists merely to give
| developers something to do. Not every user wants every
| update.
| rektide wrote:
| It's just so incredible that someone has clawed out some right
| for civilization, for society, amid so many owned proprietary
| systems. The internet is like 99.99% corporations, all rights
| reserved, but here's this one team of people that say: no, the
| public has a right. History has a right to know. You have put
| this information out there, and humankind has a right to know
| that. You don't get to maintain absolute control over this
| published information, dispose of it, alter it at your will: the
| public also has rights.
|
| It seems almost unimaginable that such a battle could or would be
| won, that this would be permitted. Everywhere else, the terms of
| service seem absolute, ironclad. It feels so much like it took
| this virtuous saint of a system to pry some user rights out of so
| much corporate ownership, that this example is the only thing
| that could ever have budged the mountain of legalese that denies
| users any rights to the things they see before them. And-
| whatever rights we have, I strongly believe including the
| future's right to see, to be given a chance to understand, to
| know of the past is at least as important.
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(page generated 2021-03-16 23:00 UTC)