[tlackemann]

The original web was building something because you wanted to. It was about staking claim in a space online, your own space, where people could visit (or not) and it was all yours. Geocities and YTMND taught so many kids HTML where they could build wacky sites just because. There was no monetization driver.

Web3 feels like a by-product of being taught to monetize every hobby we have. Nothing can exist for free anymore. There is no more web to stake without some ad or product being shoved down your throat.

I do hope it's only a trend. I've been itching to create silly sites again, just because.

[dorkwood]

How did YTMND teach kids html? I thought it was just a site that hosted a soundbite from 'Finding Forrester' and had a wacky colored background.

[jdougan]

YTMND is a whole family of sites/pages with the same basic approach of the original but different messages. ytmnd.com appears to still index them.

[rglullis]

There is absolutely nothing stopping you from creating those, with the added benefit that "web3" will allow you to host and distribute your content without ever worrying about Geocities going down.

Don't believe me? Make your silly site and put it on IPFS, or host it on the beaker browser. That is "web3" already.

[tlackemann]

You missed the point tremendously.

I didn't/shouldn't care that Geocities went down. Who would? Back in the day I had a page on my site dedicated to how much I loved the Mets. Putting anything like that on IPFS or whatever is so overkill and for what? So it's always online?

Good luck with web3 or whatever, I'll gladly and kindly stay behind.

[emteycz]

I'm certainly very disappointed that so many old "just because" sites describing quirky one-user (the developer) technology are forever gone, including the tech.

[rglullis]

You still don't need to put it on IPFS. You have your own website? Great! I am glad it works for you.

But for the absolute majority of people, they don't know or care about "having their own website". Early in the century, those people would go to Geocities/Yahoo. Later on with "web2.0" the mainstream went on to have their blogs and their social media presence, which made it easier for the mainstream, but not without its problems - e.g, people getting into walled gardens, surveillance capitalism, tragedy of the commons due to the eyeball-chasing nature of web content producers, etc...

Now with "web3" the idea is that the individual nodes can be in control of their data, and that the tech is (slowly) becoming easy enough to be adopted by the masses. That's all there is to it.

You can say "I could do that with web1!" Yes, it is true. But it is also largely missing the point. The fact that you (and I) could do these things with "web1" does not satisfy the mainstream that does not know or care about setting up their own pages and setting up a server.

Dissing "web3"on the grounds of "it doesn't give me anything new" is the nerd's version of "I was a fan of the band before they were mainstream".

[tlackemann]

> Now with "web3" the idea is that the individual nodes can be in control of their data

I'm genuinely curious how this statement differs from

> the mainstream that does not know or care about setting up their own pages and setting up a server.

What is an individual node if not just another server? And on top of that, web3 wants to throw words like "distributed" and "blockchain" at people like they have any more idea what those are than a box that runs code.

Sorry, I don't buy it.

[rglullis]

> What is an individual node if not just another server?

A "node" in decentralized network is both a server and a client, with the difference that it only is required to "serve" the data that is in control of the node operator, right?

> web3 wants to throw words like "distributed" and "blockchain"

Have you seen any demo from the beaker browser? Or have you used the IPFS Companion extension? You can just add a folder there, get a content identifier and share that with anyone. That is literally all that there is to it.

[afavour]

This isn't really about what is technically possible but rather where the critical mass of thought/discussion is. There are a whole bunch of things you can do with crypto but the majority of what is being done, talked about and hyped up is a money grab.

[rglullis]

How is that different from "web1"? Do you think that the internet became a mainstream thing just because the suits looked at what the nerds were doing and thought "oh, this is cool!" or do you think that they were attracted to it when they saw the chance of making big money?

How is that different from "web2.0"? Do you think that "the web as an application platform" and "freemium SaaS" because of the technical superiority of the web, or because all the money in Silicon Valley needed a place to go, and it ended going to repackage every already-existing utility as a web application, and later on as a mobile app?

Yeah, so a bunch of people now are hyping "web3" and quite likely they are doing it as an attempt to make money out of it. Just like every other industry from our modern globalized society.

[laserbrain]

Welcome to Late-Stage Capitalism.