It worries me when I see “end of the open web” commentary, especially when the fediverse is trying to provide a moral solution to open web tech going forward. I can’t disagree with this guy’s pov… but from an indie publisher pov, I DO NOT want to hide away my work (eg for Cybercultural), I want it to be freely available. My current strategy is to make my posts as human-centered as possible, based on my own experiences and perspectives. Will that be enough to get click-thrus from AI search tho?
There is a case to be made that we are due a ‘Napster moment’ very soon, and Perplexity may well be the Napster. In that scenario, Google especially will be compelled by legal pressures to find a way to compensate the humans who create the content that the open web relies on to continue. I guess I am hoping for that to happen, but I also don’t want to be a Lars Ulrich about it. I just want to be able to survive (and if I’m fortunate, thrive) on the open web!
“What are you doing?” This was the prompt that Twitter users saw throughout 2007. It explains why so many early tweets were about eating lunch. To be fair, nobody knew back then how to do microblogging, the 2007 term for writing short posts — 140 characters or less in Twitter’s case. Along with Facebook and Flickr, Twitter was literally inventing social media. https://cybercultural.com/p/twitter-in-2007-key-facts/
“…I spend more of my time with patrons and students talking about the relationship between things as much as how to use any one thing. So, we discuss how email talks to a word-processing program, what is happening when someone texts, or how WhatsApp is different from iMessages on an iPhone or Google Messages for Android.” https://glammr.us/@jessamyn/112565233422300007
I started this account on Mastodon.social 7 years ago today :) As my first post points out, I had previously joined Mastodon.technology, but I think that instance folded not long after. Btw this is the search I used to find my first post: from:me before:2017-06-08 #MastoBirthday
Let Perplexity do the blogging for you? No thanks, but I suppose an AI blogging tool was inevitable. “Perplexity Pages”: yet another reason to support indie publishers and the human-focused fediverse. https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/perplexity-pages
Mark Hinkle, who is really on top of the AI tech, makes this interesting comparison re Perplexity Pages:
“This reminds me of Seth Godin's website, Squidoo.
Squidoo was a revenue-sharing article-writing site. Articles were called "lenses." In 2010, the site consisted of 1.5 million lenses.”
Not sure if it matters to anyone else, but I re-branded Cybercultural as a "website and newsletter" (previously I just called it a newsletter). In the post-Substack era of Cybercultural, and now that I use @eleventy + @buttondown, and with the rise of the #fediverse as the social layer on top of the web (hat-tip @mike for that framing), and with AI trying to usurp the open web, I think it's more important than ever to reclaim the word "website" for indie publications. https://cybercultural.com
👀 “Coming in January 2025, Nicholas Carr’s Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, is a searching, searing exploration of the way social media has warped our sense of self and society.” https://www.nicholascarr.com/?page_id=664
Quantum computing has taken over from AI as the tech that seems highly promising, but also has been not quite there for years now. I did a series of posts 2 years ago, and I still receive a stream of news in my inbox about it, but it still seems a ways off. e.g. "...today announced a significant milestone on the path to commercially relevant quantum systems. While many existing quantum architectures achieve entanglement within modules, [this co] has demonstrated entanglement between modules."
@ricmac And the scifi dystopian view of quantum computing in the Devs series. One the upside it is my new favorite scifi series though I am very late to the show.
Gmail changed the web platform in 2004 — are we about to see a similar shift in web development thanks to Microsoft Edge and its new 'HTML-first/JavaScript-second' approach? Less React, more Web Components — what's not to like! Hat-tips @slightlyoff & @brucelawson for the explanations on Mastodon (but note that I'm the only one to blame for the Gmail comparison). https://thenewstack.io/from-react-to-html-first-microsoft-edge-debuts-webui-2-0/
@ricmac Thank @slightlyoff, not me; I just spread the word because I want people to default to an HTML-first approach rather than reflexly fire up create-react-crapp the moment there's something interactive to be done. React has its place, like everything else, but I get tired of people who only know how to use the React polluting the whole web with it.
@brucelawson@ricmac I would also say "thank the team": Mohamed Mansour, Atul Katti, Akrosh Ghandi, Lisa Klnik, Yvonne Smith, Hitesh Kanwathirtha, Chris Holt + the FAST team, etc. I'm just management overhead.
That said, the important part isn't the tech, it's caring about users at the margins. What really radicalized the team is using the product on the sorts of low-end devices that 35+% of our users are on today.
Taking their side is what is driving positive change.
@404mediaco really is an inspiration in this era. What about an open web media collective that is sponsored by 5-6 companies for whom the web is crucial to their business (eg Netlify cc @biilmann Fastly cc @anildash Automattic cc @photomatt …). I have been wondering lately if a RWW 2.0 but owned by a collective would work. Perhaps a pipe dream, but there are talented people like @jomc and companies that want to be associated with supporting the open web. https://friend.camp/@jomc/112525445258939697