
Why I create for the web - dgsiegel
http://blog.neave.com/post/64669185529/why-i-create-for-the-web
======
speeq
A quote from Elon Musk: "The amount of information equality that exists in the
world is unbelievable, as a result of the Internet. It's really phenomenal
because - if you go back, say, 30 years ago, and say well, the President of
the United States probably had the most access to information of any person on
Earth but today, if you have access to the Internet, you've got access to more
information than the President of the United States had 30 years ago. You have
access to all the world's information. You can go on Google and search for any
book, any scholarly work. Ya know, Wikipedia's actually pretty damn good. It's
like 90% accurate. It's just not clear what 90%. But, it's really incredible
what you can learn, and how connected you can be to people all around the
world."

~~~
felixmar
Other than leaks via Wikileaks etc. i don't have access to a lot of
information that the president of the USA had 30 years ago. Most public
information on the internet today was also available pre-internet. The main
difference is the time needed to access information. Instead of searching for
hours or even days it's now minutes. Time effiency increased a lot with the
internet.

Because it is now so much faster to get information the question has become:
is the info that i want really relevant to me? Otherwise it is still a time
waster even though it only takes a minute to look up. Like many people here i
tend to be intellectually curious and knowing things gives satisfaction. But
increasingly i have come to realize that much is not truely relevant to me. I
think that's where the focus should be for future technologies, helping people
get small amounts of highly relevant information while respecting their
privacy.

~~~
nekopa
I wonder if more than you think is actually relevant to you? The old adage is
you get data, give it structure and it becomes information. I am thinking that
maybe nowadays we need the next level: get information, give it 'structure'
and it becomes... What?

I've been thinking about this a lot recently due to an article here on HN
about the fact that we are getting lots of 'data' recently in the form of
scandalous articles in the media, which shock and dismay us, but are we tying
these all together into a larger picture? I don't think so, therefore we end
up with the modern day equivalent of shamans - conspiracy theorists. They see
the 'data' (or nowadays in its current higher level form _information_ ) and
give us 'information' about what it means (sorry, I'm still struggling with
what the higher form of information is).

Shamans saw dark clouds on the horizon and said the gods were angry,
conspiracy theorists see the NSA spying and say 'illuminati'

Now I've done a fair bit of work on KMSs (knowledge management systems) and
that could be one view, structured information becomes knowledge. But I think
that that is somehow missing the point.
Information+structure+experience+remembrance = knowledge (one way of looking
at it IMHO) So I'm searching for an other, different way to think about this
issue, because that doesn't quite seem to fit the bill here.

Is the path data>information>knowledge>wisdom ? Or are we missing steps, or
even missing completely different paths?

Or is it not even a path, but more of a n-dimensional network that is
recursive in time and size?

Maybe this should be the future focus of technologies.

~~~
anonyfox
Very interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing! Let's try to map it to a
somewhat simplified system:

data = many news-websites out there

|

v

information = RSS/Atom News Items of the sites above (basic data structure,
highly available today)

|

v

knowledge = ??

|

v

wisdom = ??

... Do you have some ideas floating around how this concrete example could be
expanded further?

~~~
nekopa
I think you have to shift the graph: what you have under info- rss atom etc,
should move up to the data position.

Then what? You could do something simple like keyword grouping - '500 news
events including the word "drone"' but I feel that is not enough. Take it
further and use semantics to do sentiment analysis maybe? '50 data point
talking positively about airbnb today'

But I still think there is something missing. I'm interested in any other
thoughts you may have, especially after shifting info-now down to data, what
would be 'new' knowledge or wisdom?

~~~
anonyfox
Okay, my thoughts now are something like this:

data: RSS/Atom stuff

information: do a basic keyword-analysis of the news snippets, maybe with some
natural language processing, push it all into a graph database, using
meaningful nouns as nodes and verbs as edges. Think of something like DBpedia,
but with tiny information pieces and high interconnectedness between. This
would be good structured "information", right?

knowledge: define some sophisticated query language / data endpoint, ideally
again with some natural language processing, to discover the informations in
the graph. the result of such a sophisticated query i'd call 'knowledge'.

wisdom: ?? <\-- no idea yet, sorry.

------
visakanv
I relate to this. I remember when I first had internet access as a kid, I'd go
to GameFAQs and websites about SimCity and Red Alert- and I was so blown away
at this amazing access I had to hundreds of internet strangers who were
interested in the same things I was interested in.

I immediately felt that I had to own a little piece of that, that I had to
create a space for myself and be useful to others the way they were useful to
me.

Alway great to be reminded of the incredible opportunity we have, that nobody
quite had prior to this. A child with an internet connection having access to
more information than the US President did 20-30 years ago. That's really
something. Thanks for sharing.

------
normloman
"The web is incredible. I love the web. In so many ways it has improved the
lives of millions by transforming society, education, culture, community, and
commerce. "

We need to extinguish this kind of enthusiasm. Sure, computers are great, and
they have changed the world, but not always for the better. And all this
unending praise we give technology can keep us from thinking about technology
critically.

I love the web. And I hate the web. I hate surveillance. I hate data mining. I
hate advertising. I hate linkbait headlines. I hate youtube comments. Hate
hate hate.

~~~
sn0v
There are negatives, no doubt, not the least of which is the TPP and its
potential ramifications for an open web. But that doesn't deter my enthusiasm
in the least for other two-thirds of the world to get online.

I'm sure there's a lot more untapped talent out there, and I'd like to believe
the net sum of their innovations will see the positives outweigh the
negatives.

~~~
normloman
There is untapped talent out there, but I'm not sure the web can unlock all of
it. You don't have a chance to develop your talents when you're going hungry
each night. Nor is it easy to be talented under an authoritarian dictatorship.
These are problems a website or smartphone app can't fix (though maybe they
can help a little). I don't even buy that the web can raise people out of
poverty. Seems like it produces more inequality if anything, though that
remains to be seen.

What the web can do is educate people (though it's also capable of
misinforming them). And it can make life a little more efficient (Shopping
online reduces travel time. Google maps reduces time driving around asking for
directions). These are modest improvements, and they could unlock some talent.
Just not much.

~~~
sn0v
Exactly. To clarify, by talent and innovation I didn't just mean the websites
that the rest of the world can build. I meant it wrt the empowerment that free
MOOC's can provide when it comes to basic education (especially in remote
areas where schools are not always existent/affordable) and the possible
innovations it could lead to in different sectors outside the realm of
software development.

~~~
normloman
Getting an education isn't just a matter of cost. You need free time to take
the classes, a quiet place to study, a family that supports you, and often, a
teacher that motivates you to be your best. That's why I don't think MOOCs
will change anything. They're great for people who are already educated, and
have the resources to teach themselves. The rural poor in developing nations
have bigger things to worry about.

------
drdaeman
Didn't like the article. I believe using ambiguity of words "web", "create"
and "content" he completely mixed up things. Maybe he's right in some or all
aspects, but it's too messy to read. At least I feel something's wrong when I
read something about hyperlinks, then suddenly seeing a comparison of web to
native code (huh?)

~~~
simonw
That made complete sense to me. There's a trend recently of people focusing on
native mobile apps instead of websites (see Keith Rabois on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/rabois/status/406519032624320512](https://twitter.com/rabois/status/406519032624320512)
"nobody is going to be using the web soon"). I read this article as a reaction
to that trend.

~~~
drdaeman
Thanks. Now, with a context, it made sense.

[Added a bit later] Although, I don't see how "mobile" is much conceptually
different from the "web". The only missing part is linking and transferring of
mobile app code over the network, on demand, instead of barcode/hyperlink-
market-install manual process. But that's because of security model
deficiencies on modern mobiles, and I won't be surprised things'll change.
Then mobile'll be part of the web - no conflict here.

------
thousande
As a so called hacker that has grown up with the Web I awe at how software
vendors released their software in the past. I mean when you got stuck with
xyzy there was no quick Google search that gave you 10 different fixes or
workarounds. When the CD-ROM/disc/s was shipped it was shipped. It must have
taken ages before the user got the bug fix

------
bowietrousers
Except that it's not just 'a link' is it? It's billions of miles of copper,
fibre optics, routers, switches, media converters, legal agreements, large
buildings, nuclear power stations...

~~~
rimantas
Yup.

    
    
      > You’re able to access this content without the need to
      > log in, enter a password or download an app.
    

This is only because that app is already on your device. And I am pretty sure
the majority of Chrome, Opera of Firefox users _did_ download an app.

~~~
TuringTest
The point is that you don't need an app specific for that data repository.

There was a time when you needed a different application to connect to each
publisher, or each content type. You may be too young to remember that.

------
denibertovic
I can relate to this. Very well put.

------
girvo
I create for the web, because I have never been good enough to create for the
desktop. Thankfully, that's been changing lately -- it's a nice change of
pace, and I think desktop programming can learn some things from web
programming (and, has been, if you look at elementary OS).

~~~
marknutter
> I create for the web, because I have never been good enough to create for
> the desktop

Why would being good enough have anything to do with whether you can create
for the desktop? If anything, creating for the desktop is _easier_. There are
far less languages, technologies, quirks, etc. you need to deal with as a
dektop app developer.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I agree. I programmed for desktop and mobile before the web. Every time I
tried to get started developing for the web I was held back by how many
different things I needed to learn just to get started (html, css, js, ruby,
rails, how servers work and how I get my site onto one, how to setup a local
server for development). I use these things to build a web app which could be
built on the desktop/mobile using one language.

