Elizabeth Lopato has been on a roll. I feel she’s been the Prophetess of Web 3.0. She’s written a series of great articles on “the decay of Google Search and, with it, the findability of archive material; the destruction of Twitter by the coward Elon Musk; the AI glurge polluting the open web; the needless login prompts.”
Two recent articles she’s written tie together for me: the demise of Web 2.0 and the out of control time-suck of the torrent of Web 2.0 on our phones.
Get in, loser, we’re going back to Web 1.0. We have the opportunity to get out from under the algorithms. So maybe it’s time to think about what a web of people looks like now.
Source: What would the internet of people look like now? – The Verge
The wicked witch is dead, Jim
In the past year, Elizabeth has articulated so well the unravelling and dysfunction on the web. She compares that to the early days of the web (say, pre-2005) where the ubiquity of phones and feeds didn’t exist. And she rues the dominance of the algorithms from behemoth controllers of the internet.
I was there on those early days (this blog has a lot of commentary from back then). We were excited about closer social connections across space and time, of democratizing content creation for all, of breaking the shackles of powerful incumbents.
Alas, we changed one set of shackles for another. And, as anyone knows who builds selection algorithms, be careful what you select for.
Phone it in
And back then I was an ambassador to the new world of carrying a smartphone, hovering up your life thru notes, pictures, and videos and sharing them with the world (indeed, part of a team building such an app). I also took it to the next level, promoting (actually, also trying to build) the brave new world of finding, mixing, and publishing social feeds online.
Ah, the hope of it.
Dyst-hope-ia
Well, you know where that got us.
Elizabeth echoes so much of where I’ve been going. I got off of all social media. Hang out now in bulletin-boards, aka Discord. I mostly use my phone for group chats and looking up information. And lots of phone calls.
We’re not alone
Elizabeth is not just articulating a personal feeling she senses, but has tapped into the zeitgeist. Just check out the enthusiasm in the comments of her article (OMG, interesting and considerate comments – how early-days Web 2.0).
There’s hope for where we go from here.
I, for one, have been trying to get back my blogging mojo from the early days of this blog. I think I also need to get better at reading other folks’ blogs.
Maybe the future of the web is to go back to the past of the web. Indeed, Elizabeth exhorts folks to avail of the new tools that make it easier than ever to build their own internet, with their own friends, and connect to the people that matter.
I like that.
Now get out and touch some grass.
Image from my post “Foreground:Background. Can watches save us from our phone attention deficit disorder?” Note _everyone_ at the station is looking at their phone. And the more folks around me looking at their phone, the less likely I pull my phone out. This is one of those instance, s’sure.
