Imagine if we said that about web sites at the begining. The Web needs to decide what it want to be? A plaftorm to sell stuff? Contact people? Write? Listen to music?
But the web wasn't about listening to music at the start! It started with organizing documents on a network, at CERN. And it took over existing document platforms by adding a simple point-and-click browser user interface to them, inspired by HyperCard (where do you think the "hyperlink" got its name?)
The modern, more economic web, wouldn't come until Netscape added form fields and cookies, at the behest of some of the original owners. And there were a ton of people at Netscape making these decisions about their vision of the future of the web. In-browser music listening wouldn't come until Macromedia, Disney and Microsoft pushed their vision for a "multi-media web"; browsers wouldn't build native support until much, much later.
So yes, we absolutely decided what the web would be about, and built technology to match that vision.
> inspired by HyperCard (where do you think the "hyperlink" got its name?)
I'm as much of a HyperCard fan as (almost) anyone else, but that is almost certainly not where the term "hyperlink" comes from. Ted Nelson used the word "link" back in the mid 1960s, in the context of another coinage of his, "hypertext". The historical record is already a little unclear about whether or not he was using hyperlink that early, but by the time HyperCard came to be, the term was already differentiated from a "simple link", with some level of implication caused by the "hyper" prefix that it was most likely on another computer/server. The most HyperCard could offer was a link into a different stack.
The "hyper" prefix predated Hypercard, and it's meaning in the context of information processing/retrieval/presentation meant more than the majority of links that HyperCard offered (even though they were also great). Yes, I know that the wikipedia page on the word "hyperlink" claims that HyperCard "may have been the first use", but the cited reference for that claim offers no evidence for it whatsoever.
Exactly. To get the beginnings of real adoption, a technology has to do something better. A specific thing. Better enough that people switch.
The early web's competition was things like FTP, Gopher, and email-driven apps (e.g., Listservs, the Usenet Oracle). Plus paper-based stuff, like department phone books, mailing documents around, etc. It was hugely better than any of those for many common uses, so adoption was rapid.
Once you have a critical mass of users, then it can make sense to add other things in. But for that first audience, we can't be vague, selling some shining future that will happen eventually.
As I recall, one of the example CGI programs from NCSA presented a form to fill out a Papa John's order, which was then sent via the email-to-fax gateway. Which, now that I think of it, was indeed more "economic".
Cookies was definitely a Netscape thing, for profit making - a shopping cart for MCI.
The first two paragraphs reiterate that the early web was very much a reflection of the hypertext transfer protocol and hypertext markup language in that it literally just handled text pages with links in them. and it did it pretty well. It wasn't designed to handle streaming video or client-side processing/page rendering via Javascript or any of the innumerable other elements added on to it later. It was designed to do one thing well.
- A complex system cannot be “made” to work. It either works or it doesn’t
- A simple system, designed from scratch, sometimes works.
- Some complex systems actually work.
- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
- A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
There are two problems with this line of argument:
1. The web succeeded but many things whose backers made similar comparisons failed. Knowing that one technology had a big impact doesn’t say that a given unproven technology will be the next one to go big. It’s more likely that you’re looking at the next Groove Networks or something like that.
2. The web was immediately useful for many people and you could get started easily. IPFS has some interesting but far from unique properties and trying to be a network increases the amount of adoption and maturity needed for it to be worth using for most people. This is especially true for peer-to-peer sharing where the most useful participation requires up-front risk and costs which many people aren’t going to want to accept. Without that, it’s basically just harder to use web hosting which may or may not be cheaper.
It's been 6 years now and IPFS is still stuck with the same problems it had at the start with no real pathway to being useful. Most technology does something useful early on. I don't know the timeline for the web but I don't imagine it involved 6 years of marketing and selling to investors while not serving any purpose well.
I'd argue the WWW was instantly useful, even during its halcyon days.
IPFS on the other hand is a horrible "jack of all trades" that has mediocre performance even in the best of times, and it hasn't really gotten any better since it first launched 6 years ago.
And that's not even bringing up the cryptocurrency cohort souring the project with its stench.
I don't object to the existence of IPFS, rather I prefer more efficient and focused projects instead. Someone in the comment threads mentioned Solid, which sounds like a decent decentralized information protocol or system of sorts.
And for those that want censorship resistance... who can forget Freenet? That project has been around since 2000 and seems to do a pretty bang up job, even if the performance is not much better.
Why is it that people trot out this argument in response to any criticism of any technology? You could apply exactly the same sort of reasoning to Microsoft Bob. Do you think that had the potential to be revolutionary?
I can't see the future. I can, however, look at the world and think about what I see.
Saying "imagine if we said that about a technology that doesn't suck" doesn't make a technology that clearly sucks, not suck.
The Web was a hit because it was really obviously useful for real work from the moment of its creation. IPFS is BitTorrent with magnet: links, and the seeding problems that implies, and the rest is janky nonsense.
> Imagine if we said that about web sites at the begining.
The web was fast (for documents on 56k) and extremely useful almost immediately. It was obvious to everyone watching that the technology was going to change everything.
I think you misremember. I was definitely on the net and the web with a 14.4k modem. It was not that useful. The web was a pretty small part of the net iirc until the mid-90s. I preferred IRC channels and BBSes then since I was very young and didn't have the patience for most websites to load and I couldn't instantly join the "conversation" like I could with a BBS or an IRC channel.
I think something regulatory changed about 1995, such that there were instantly tons of ISP startups, and I think that 33.6k modems were available about then.
I had a 14.4K Zoom modem, but I'm pretty sure the ISP I worked for around '95-'96 was buying lots of US Robotics 33.6 modems.
I agree that 56k came a bit later, and didn't necessarily work on any particular phone line.
IMHO what changed in 1995, was MS adding TCP/IP to Windows 95. Prior to that you had fight with dial-up, Trumpet Winsock, PPP and PPTP to get on the internet at all. Most normal people still couldn't do it without help, but it moved into the realm of possible.
During 95 or 96, I was explaining to customers over the phone how to set up Trumpet Winsock and MacTCP/PPP. Most people didn't instantly get Windows 95, so it wasn't the reason that the ISP existed. And it was already possible to access the internet to some extent through an established online service, I think I'd used Delphi, AOL, maybe others during high school.
Something made it feasible right then for anybody to set up a bank of modems in their apartment, to provide direct internet, and there was an explosive growth in small ISPs before they consolidated. At the time, I was kind of oblivious to the historic moment, but the one I worked for was literally a few modems in the closet of a crummy apartment downtown when I started and within months we'd moved to an office a few blocks away and were installing modems like mad.
I found this, not necessarily authoritative:
"In 1994 the National Science Foundation commissioned four private companies to build four public Internet access points to replace the government-run Internet backbone: WorldCom in Washington, Pacific Bell in San Francisco, Sprint in New Jersey, and Ameritech in Chicago. Then other telecom giants entered the market with their own Internet services, which they often subcontracted to smaller companies. By 1995 there were more than 100 commercial ISPs in the USA."
I think that was probably it - right then and there anyone could buy a pipe to the internet and connect some modems. It was around then that I heard the term "T1" which was a lot back then.
Yea, I'm afraid that's not so. In 1993, I was running a WildCat BBS and I was way more hyped about that and it's RIP graphics, lol. The only way I could get on the internet at all was through other peoples university accounts, which required dial-up, Trumpet Winsock, and PPP. It was a chore to get running and was very slow on the 14.4k (and slower) modems of the day. 56k modems weren't introduced until the late 90s. So yea, between 90 and 95 other technologies seemed more appealing like BBSs, Gopher and places like "The Well", at least to me.
In 1993, iirc, I borrowed a Mac and 2400bps modem from my high school that I used to call the library and AOL.
Before that, the way to get software (for me, because I wasn't a college student) was to go to a local computer store and copy their disks containing free or shareware.
I think that the question of what user-facing purpose(s) a technology can be put to is somehow qualitatively different than what backend roles it might play. I could be wrong.
This only sounds ridiculous because you replaced the things the OP was talking about, with your own, to make it sound ridiculous.
"Is it about being a decentralized caching layer? Is it about permanently storing content? Is it about replacing my web server? Is it about replacing DNS? Is it about censorship resistance?"
websites at the beginning did not decide to be a caching layer - they decided to be websites. they did decide to permanently store content. they did decide to use web servers. they did not decide to replace dns. they did decide to be about censorship resistance.
now imagine you put up a website, put some time into it, and it may or may not be up at a random time in the future. not a product that's usable.
The modern, more economic web, wouldn't come until Netscape added form fields and cookies, at the behest of some of the original owners. And there were a ton of people at Netscape making these decisions about their vision of the future of the web. In-browser music listening wouldn't come until Macromedia, Disney and Microsoft pushed their vision for a "multi-media web"; browsers wouldn't build native support until much, much later.
So yes, we absolutely decided what the web would be about, and built technology to match that vision.