SoylentNews

canopic jug [soylentnews.org] writes:

Retired programmer Kevin Boone has a guide to the retro-web [kevinboone.me] in which he summarizes as the small web, IndieWeb, Gemini [geminiprotocol.net], Gopher, and so on.

I’m old enough to remember the earliest days of the world-wide web. HTTP and HTML weren’t radical technologies – they just offered a new, more user-friendly way to use the Internet. Still, the web’s potential was clear right from the those early days: it opened up the Internet to people who weren’t necessarily computer scientists. As an academic, I vaguely realized that the web would have a huge, positive impact on communication between researchers and, indeed, it did.

Our vision, back in the mid-90s, was that the web would become, essentially, a decentralized library. Websites would be run by universities, health agencies, libraries, governmental departments, and even private individuals, all sharing knowledge for the common good.

What I didn’t predict – what I don’t think anybody predicted – was how the web would eventually come to dominate communication. And once it did, it became ripe for commercial exploitation.

What experience do Soylentils have with the smolweb or with Gemini [geminiprotocol.net] or modern Gopher spaces? Or your take on undoing the September that never ended [catb.org], even if for only a corner of the net?

Previously:
(2023) CERN Celebrates 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [soylentnews.org]
(2018) History of Gopher [soylentnews.org]
(2016) The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol [soylentnews.org]
(2014) World Wide Web Turns 25 years Old [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission