The Web Is(n't) Dead

[starseerdrgn]

So, something that I've seen every time I jump into the gopherspace has been that Wired article about how the "web is dead". So, I finally took the time to read it, and... Eh?

I mean, I kinda get the point of what they were saying, but... The web isn't that torn apart. It's not an irreparable mess by any stretch. It's more in a sort of growing pains phase, known as "people want convenience over progress". And by people, I'm referring to the mainstream people that mostly consume rather than create for the web. People who really only have a presence through social media and nothing else.

However, there is a another side to it all. The article talks about a "Blame Us" and "Blame Them", but a third option is "Blame Web Developers". See, during the 90s and 2000s, getting into website creation was much simpler. Most people just used HTML and CSS, maybe a bit of JavaScript or PHP to host guestbooks or add webrings and topsites systems, and occasionally used Flash and Java to do thing. For most of it, it was pure HTML and CSS. People were there for the information contained on the websites, and creators were encouraged to make even simple websites to give themselves a presence.

Today, we have "professional developers", we have actual professionals, and we have people too confused by the insane number of hoops most of said professionals go through to build even the most basic of websites through the methods most programmers use to build native apps. And there in lies the problem: modern development stacks made for programmers, not the normal person. The tech elite are trying to make web design so complex that it almost becomes accidental gatekeeping, since most non-techie users won't take the time to learn a crapton of frameworks that might be defunct in less than a year. It's a waste of their time. And that just hurts the web as a whole.

The web was always meant to be open in multiple ways:

• You could look at source code of the site you're on to see what's actually happening, allowing you to learn from it.
• You could easily make your own website to represent yourself, allowing you gain a presence on the web that you control.
• You could easily find hosts that would help you with putting that site out on the open web for people to find, thus giving you full presence on the web.

However, all three are practically gone:

• Many websites obfuscate their code through layers of server-side JavaScript, making it impossible to confirm that the code is safe, and making it impossible to learn from any of it.
• Many developers discourage new site-makers from learning to create websites by making it look more complex than it actually is.
• Some hosting providers (GoDaddy, for example) will remove your website on not just legal grounds, but /moral grounds/ based on the whims of public opinion, eliminating the openness and becoming gatekeepers themselves.
• Even if you host your own website using your own hardware, your ISP can also be subject to the whims of the public's opinion, and remove your server's access to the open web.

And while this sounds like the web is dead, it really isn't. It just means that people need to change. People of the public, people in corporations, people who design websites professionally... These people need to change their attitudes, simply because they are to blame for the web becoming seemingly "dead".

Comments

[xankriegor]

You echo most of my sentiments on this gradually developing situation, albeit with significantly less venom; I could slap some of my peers I saw going along with this upside the head for the position we're left in now, as far as 'making web code again' goes.

I'm optimistic (but not necessarily confident) about some of the pushback I've seen, especially when it embraces new styles of development (eg. Glitch) instead of simply eschewing them (eg. much of Neocities). We lost a lot in making it all such a mess, but we also gained certain creative freedoms in blurring the server- and client-side together so much, -in theory-. It's just unclear to me whether that freedom will actually be excised from all the muck it's in anytime soon.