Tech Leader Pro

Tech Leader Pro podcast 2023 week 47, Neo Web 1.0

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We lost the spirit of Web 1.0, can we ever revive that via a Neo Web 1.0 renaissance?

Notes:

  • I am back!
  • It may be sentimentality, but I really miss the old days of the internet.
  • I remember using it for the first time in a public library on a 56k modem, on a PC that you had to book in advance.
  • There was an excitement about it, it was new and unexplored.
  • Bandwidth was such an issue, online video was practically non-existent, while images loading in via progressive scans, initially as low-resolution images that gradually became clear over several seconds.
  • Social media did not exist.
  • Search engines had no ads.
  • There were no pop-ups for accepting cookies or signing up to newsletters.
  • Instead, we had personal home pages with page counters, blink tags, and scrolling marquees, and web rings...
  • E-commerce did not exist, I can clearly remember when people we paranoid about sharing their credit card details online with anyone for fear of being ripped off.
  • They had to be educated to "look out for the lock" for SSL-enabled websites before sharing their credit card details.
  • To think there is a whole generation of Zoomers who never experienced the naive joy and freedom of Web 1.0.
  • Do we need a Neo Web 1.0, a return to the old?
  • There was an attempt to do something similar a few years, back, when Geocities relaunched as Neocities: "Neocities is a social network of 685,600 web sites that are bringing back the lost individual creativity of the web." - https://neocities.org/
  • I love projects like Neocities, and launched Greppr for similar reasons.
  • As a technologist, I will never advocate for a return to the past, but in the shift to the commercial platform dominated internet we have today, we have really lost that free spirit of discovery and hacker ethos.
  • An internet of builders and hackers is far more interesting that an internet of consumers.
  • We have arrived at the wrong destination.
  • What I am working on this week:
    • Greppr.org - Now at 2.8m web pages indexed.
    • Media I am enjoying this week:
      • For All Mankind.
      • Cyberpunk 2077.

        • Notes and subscription links are here: https://techleader.pro/a/621-Tech-Leader-Pro-podcast-2023-week-47,-Neo-Web-1.0

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        Tech Leader ProBy John Collins