History of the Web - YouTube
I really enjoyed this trip down memory lane with Chris:
From the Web’s inception, an ancient to contemporary history of the Web.
DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow - YouTube
A great rousing—practical—speech from Cory.
Related links
Tim Berners-Lee ~ The World Wide Web - YouTube
There’s something very endearing about this docudrama retelling of the story of the web.
Pluralistic: Tech workers and gig workers need each other (13 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Ever wondered why you’re always being encouraged to download the app?
But zero percent of app users have installed an ad-blocker, because they don’t exist, because you’d go to prison if you made one. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.
How to fix the internet | MIT Technology Review
We’re in a rare moment when a shift just may be possible; the previously intractable and permanent-seeming systems and platforms are showing that they can be changed and moved, and something new could actually grow.
The fix for the internet isn’t to shut down Facebook or log off or go outside and touch grass. The solution to the internet is more internet: more apps, more spaces to go, more money sloshing around to fund more good things in more variety, more people engaging thoughtfully in places they like. More utility, more voices, more joy.
We Need To Rewild The Internet
Powerful metaphors in this piece by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon on the Waldsterben of the internet:
Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within.
We all know this. We see it each time we reach for our phones. But what most people have missed is how this concentration reaches deep into the internet’s infrastructure — the pipes and protocols, cables and networks, search engines and browsers. These structures determine how we build and use the internet, now and in the future.