The Web 35 Years Later

I stumbled upon this gem today Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday: An Open Letter by Tim Berners-Lee and my heart skipped a beat. As someone as old as the web I have a lot of memories of the journey through it all. I grew up during the explosion of the Web beyond the imaginable. Before jumping into the article I already had some thoughts based on where we are now. Some I shared in other thoughts that led to the "Big Divide" phenomenon and the "Attention Thieves". So I had a feeling of where TBL might go with this open letter.

I can relate to the original intention for the creation of the Web. The three C's: collaboration, compassion, and creativity. I won't go into as much detail as he did but these three pillars are still present today. The problem is that they have been vastly corrupted by greed. There were a lot of diverse communities, and it was like opening a present when you discovered a new one that fit your niche. I got in contact with many people and things didn't have to become political at every turn, for those communities, it just didn't make sense since that's not what they were about. Today though, when plugging into any social network, you get inundated whether you like it or not.

While some intentions were (maybe) geared towards one of those pillars, it turned into a machine spitting out content to keep users hooked. Building on top of the original idea of collaboration is a stream of targeted posts, profiling, and polarization. Those platforms have then shaped the web to grab anyone's attention for as long as possible, to manipulate it, and eventually profit from it. I believe that the introduction of smartphones made things worse. Now that you have access to it from the palm of your hand, the scroll of doom is hard to stop. Most have then become consuming machines. Scrolling through an endless queue of tweets, pictures, videos, you name it!

This created addiction, but not the healthy type. When I was younger I could not wait to connect to the web and share new adventures with other folks. Or even learn a thing or two. But most importantly, I was so focused on creating and nurturing my corner of the web, and eventually even a small community. I was incredibly passionate about it and I was a creative machine. I slowly lost that drive, fascinated also by the shiny new things the web brought. And so the infinite scrolling started with a pinch of innocence not realizing what type of habit I was building. This became clear several years later, after college, when I would find myself consuming more than I created. But I never intended to get there! How did I let that happen?

The advent of TikTok, Reels, or whatever else you want to call it was the last nail in the coffin. I stayed away from TikTok from day 1 until that format leaked onto other platforms. After a few scrolls, I quickly realized how easily you could just keep going. I don't blame folks who cannot stop the scrolling, they just fell victim to a carefully crafted system that is supposed to keep you hooked. I'll admit, I found myself falling for it more times than I'd like to admit but I tried every trick on the book to get away from it. This is part of the reason why I picked up writing. I used to do this constantly and I wanted to bring it back.

Thoughts

A lot of the points raised by Tim Berners-Lee in his open letter are spot on. I think the evolution of the web tells you something about human nature and open, generally unregulated platforms. I liked the idea of the Solid Protocol and I intend to explore it more. You can also donate to the World Wide Web Foundation to help bring this vision to life. Having witnessed the evolution of the web I have become way more skeptical about joining any new platform. This is part of the reason why I pulled the plug from many social networks. While I do find value in them I'm still looking for the right place (I am just about to try Bluesky and see how that goes, stay tuned).