future of ~the internet~

well yeah, precisely. everyone knew the GNU approach was about changing computing by forcing software to be free, and had a strong ideological component, and the BSD approach was quite different. basically building cool stuff, sharing it with the world, and hoping the world would want to share back.

but that's not skewering -- that's a well known debate. and GNU has never been anti-business or anti-capital in the least, just pro- free software. furthermore, they've actually supported patent law more than many people would like, because they need it to work in order to enforce the GPL.

I know plenty of folks who basically have the attitude "if i release this GPL then some people won't be able to use it, but I want everyone to use it, so I'm using BSD or public domain licensing or something." Creative commons licenses for example are typically much more BSD-like than GPL like as well. And they're not doing this for ideological reasons, except to the extent their ideology is 'i want to share my cool thing with everyone'.

in fact GPL is usually used _more_ by people out to make money, since they'll use dual licensing schemes where if you need a non-GPL license for a commercial product you can get that too, for an appropriate price. and that's absolutely something promoted by FSF/GNU people!

So this is a much broader issue and I think the article gave a really shallow treatment.

This is awesome. CERN put the very first website back online

Tim B-L should get the Nobel Peace Prize

concur.

Let's wait until Vine brings down the Jong-Un regime /fakejeffjarvis

https://twitter.com/MIAuniverse/status/356553491566706691

IDGI... before the internet crossed what? The Streams?? Venkman said that would be bad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2013/08/Googleps1-1024x777.jpg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2013/08/Googleps2-1024x735.jpg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/26/hackers-deface-google-palestine-object-to-google-maps-labeling-of-israel/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

The hackers further went on to suggest that changing the title of Israel on Google Maps to Palestine would be a “revolution” — and suggesting that visitors listen to R&B singer Rihanna and “be cool.”

:P

so horace dediu of Asymco & The Critical Path is starting a new thing significant digits where he gets to take his chartboy schtick to ~video~

first episode is on "the future of the internet" and what happens when internet adoption plateus globally

this is sort of not great as a first 15 mins of discussion (*8 minutes of graphs* "so what do you think?" "uhhh i hadn't seen any of that data before") buuuut it looks like Part 1 of a 5 part discussion and i trust horace's judgement in bringing on guests to believe the other 4 parts will be cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab7yxU7lNHg

In this inaugural episode we open with the biggest question facing the biggest technological innovation of our time: the limit to growth of the Internet. The Internet is the backbone of our post-industrial society as much as the railroad was the backbone of the industrial revolution. Even more so, the diffusion of internet consumption is the fundamental engine of growth at a time when industrial economies are all mired in syndromes of underinvestment and misallocation of resources.

And so it matters greatly if and when the Internet will “inflect” in growth, going from acceleration to deceleration. Mobile computing sustained this acceleration, bringing computing and connectivity to the billions for whom the PC would always be beyond reach. But even with the expansion of device-based usage limits are in sight.

The implications could be profound. Frothy valuations and optimism could evaporate. Venture Capital could find few exits and the “second Internet Bubble” could burst. On the other hand, maybe the data shows that opportunity is largely unmet. Quantity of users is but one proxy. How can growth and business model innovation continue?

To help us think this through I have as my guest Marko Anderson, cofounder of Random [1] and a former colleague at Nokia.

Stay tuned for four more parts:

Part 2: Browsing vs. Apps The HTML5 vs. Native debate and the jobs the Internet is hired to do.
Part 3: Monetize This The problem with business model innovation. When the ad dollars run out, what will take their place?
Part 4: Random How discovery is changing and the value of irrationality.
Part 5: Glass is half full How can we screw this up? Privacy, Surveillance and The Internet Citizen’s Bill of Rights.

creepiest 2 sentences i've read all year

Does the frisson of reading these weird corporate tweets happen because we are rating the social-media manager’s performance on Twitter, like an Olympic judge holding up a score at the end of each tweet (and supplying important metrics to the brand at the same time)? Or does the Denny’s brand’s mewling Twitter intimacy make us feel paternal, bound to support and foster our corporate brand children as they speak to us through the web, learning our native medium?

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/weird-corporate-twitter/

Carles doesn’t even tweet anymore

got 2 keep it fresh bb

soo barrett brown just got 6 years, in part, for sharing a link to an IRC chat

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/22/7871317/barrett-brown-sentencing-anonymous-stratfor

in other The Future is Terrifying news

One day in 2011, Moosa opened the Facebook Messenger app on his iPhone. What he saw was chilling: someone else typing under his name to an activist friend of his in Bahrain. Whoever it was kept posing personal questions prodding for information, and Moosa watched unfold right before eyes. He panicked.

"It was like, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’" he recalls. He changed his password, alerted his friend, and stopped using Facebook Messenger — but the intrusions kept coming.

In another instance, Moosa noticed that someone posing as him solicited his female Facebook friends for sex — part of an effort, it seemed, to blackmail or perhaps defame him in Bahrain’s conservative media. Facebook was only the beginning. Unbeknownst to him, Moosa’s phone and computer had been infected with a highly sophisticated piece of spyware, built and sold in secret. The implant effectively commandeered his digital existence, collecting everything he did or said online.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7861645/finfisher-spyware-let-bahrain-government-hack-political-activist

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-failed-promise-of-deep-links-aa307b3abaa5

I think about this stuff all the time so it's annoying to see something so wrongheaded.

"Right now, though, we could be forgiven for worrying that deep linking is mostly about helping people sell us stuff."

Targeted ads are obnoxious, but it hasn't killed the web yet.

"Most apps are proprietary; you can only create deep links to them if the app’s creator allows you to."

Apps that don't provide deep links aren't going to show up in Google search results. Good luck with that.

"Meanwhile, back on the Web, the bulk of the links we encounter are lazy, manipulative, or mundane. Is it time to play “Taps” over the link’s corpse?"

I'm so sorry for wasting everyone's time here.

well this is the most dystopian commercial i've ever seen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1yb-wWwAEQ

did everybody read this http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm

cc iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

schlump - its a good piece (well designed, you just keep reading till you get to the end).

I am not sure how the pro-AI lot would destroy the version of the web we have at the moment. The 2nd version is tied into questions of 'well can we destroy most jobs so we can spend even more of our free time looking at cats?'. I think some of these things can co-exist.

Not fancying ILXor's chances of suriving till 2060, but it might outlast facebook.

Probably.

But it will be all 70-90 year olds then. Everyone younger will be in VR social networks.

cheers schlump, really interesting article

isn't it interesting. i really required that level of exposition on the divisions in 'progress' around cores, battery life, &c, but i feel like some of its takehome is pretty inspirational on a smaller scale, sort of along the lines of the geocities romanticism in the facebook thread.

the guy is a really beautiful & funny writer who also wrote this informative precis on transnational burrito delivery, & who peppered his talk on walden with amusing conference diversions like

I went back and re-read a book that had a profound effect on me when I was younger, that really lit a fire under me about being self-reliant and living a life on my own terms. I wanted to see if it still had anything to say to me now that I was actually doing it.

And to my relief, it was even better than I remembered. It turns out there was all kinds of stuff I had missed because I was too young, or too callow, to really understand it.

[at this point I troll the audience by displaying a huge slide of Ayn Rand]

So today I want to talk to you about one of my biggest heroes, whose work I think will have a profound impact on anyone trying to create something on their own terms.

Of course I mean this guy, Henry David Thoreau.

Not fancying ILXor's chances of suriving till 2060, but it might outlast facebook.

this will be such a vindication

kings of the world, that day

dang it didn't we have a recent death-of-journalism-because-internet thread that wasn't the facebork one

https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/dont-settle-the-journalist-in-the-shadow-of-the-commercial-web

The internet allows for a lot of analysis, because journalists can comment on a story as it develops. That’s a good thing — analysis is really important — but the commercial web often promotes a kind of analysis that benefits platforms instead of readers. The problem is that democratic conversation, the kind that journalism needs to nurture, takes place between people, while the commercial web’s primary interest is presenting a conversation for people — a simulacrum, that can be used as a vehicle for advertisements and a means of collecting data about readers’ interests (to make sure those ads are well targeted). It’s not enough to engage readers, but it’s enough to draw clicks from readers wasting time at work, and clicks pay. This opens up a place for “analytical” writing that promises an argument, but doesn’t necessarily need to deliver it. It is the most prevalent modern way a good journalist settles down. And it leads to wasting a lot of readers’ time, which is a brazen violation of the terms of the journalist’s “contract.” More importantly, it reinforces the pernicious notion that there is no distinction between journalism and mere content, which helps build acceptance for other kinds of “settled” work — including the kind that merely repeats official stories from official sources. When journalists fail to engage readers, they discourage readers from critically engaging with journalism — and that diminishes readers’ ability to critically engage in democratic conversation as a whole.

Not completely sure I follow "promises an argument, but doesn't necessarily need to deliver it" -- in other words stuff with #slatepitchy headlines/concepts where the piece isn't actually all that well-reasoned or thoroughly worked through?

they are more like the internet journalism equivalent of those billboards that say "does advertising work? just did!"

yeah they're not putting it well but i think they're talking about those pieces commissioned to pick up whatever uniques are still on the table for Trending Topic (X) that don't actually do any research or interview anyone but merely rehash the top 7 stories that are already out there about it

headlined with something arresting, in an ideal world

ok yeah when I went and actually read it in the context it seems to be referring to the phenomenon exemplified by the piece about Amy Schumer (and also lol that I then went and responded to just the one paragraph without reading the article).

I sometimes refer to stuff like that Schumer piece (mentally) as the "OK/Not OK School of Journalism"

There was quite an outbreak of it after the Charlie Hebdo incident.

we sort of figured this stuff out in 2001 didn't we?

http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/11/meet-dialogue-the-new-front-in-the-internet-commenting-wars/

you mean we us

here

us'ns?

yep!

shoulda monetized this shit

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gwire/6655443487/

I remember that issue.

I also remember someone referring to Wired as "Mondo 2000 for business guys"

change that to "for obsessive consumers" and it is!

http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm?mod=e2this

Let me start by saying that beautiful websites come in all sizes and page weights. I love big websites packed with images. I love high-resolution video. I love sprawling Javascript experiments or well-designed web apps.

This talk isn't about any of those. It's about mostly-text sites that, for unfathomable reasons, are growing bigger with every passing year.

While I'll be using examples to keep the talk from getting too abstract, I’m not here to shame anyone, except some companies (Medium) that should know better and are intentionally breaking the web.
…

this has been like the week of linking to maciej ceglowski talks and now it's starting to circle back. good for him!

i don't know who that is i just hate having to restart my browser every few hours to force it to release its cache

Something I was pondering recently: why haven't large media conglomerates or traditional newspaper companies scooped up the more successful internet upstart media companies -- gawker, buzzfeed etc. Or have they tried to do so?

Scripps acquired the Earwolf podcast network

That's all I got

nbc invested a lot in vox and buzzfeed and hearst was an early investor in buzzfeed. and a bunch of those old media companies have money in vice.

huffpo > aol > verizon is kinda 'old'

p4k & conde nast also

I know this isn't a new thing, but I am finding the Internet increasingly unreadable. Drop-downs, pop-ups, scroll-overs, like every single page I go to to read something (except ILX) is so cluttered with moving parts that it is actively difficult to just navigate and read.

I know all the reasons for it, the desperate attempts to monetize clicks and content somehow someway, but it feels like it's approaching a breaking point. Though it is also possible I am just a middle-aged guy who doesn't like all the moving pieces, and the kids are just fine with it.