
The Future of the Web Is 100 Years Old - pmcpinto
http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-future-of-the-web-is-100-years-old
======
petewailes
In a world where the Trump bid for the Whitehouse has popular support, and a
lot of it, and where things like Fox News and Buzzfeed exist, it's reasonably
clear that people care more about being entertained and having their opinions
validated and reinforced, more than being right.

It's a difficult question - should information be censored, to make sure it's
actually correct?

Personally, I struggle with this one. My default reaction would be yes, a
curated internet, fact checked for accuracy would be better. But at the same
time, I know that people interpret unbiased information with their own
prejudices, to reinforce their own views. So simply curating and only
reporting truth, I suspect, isn't enough.

My own feeling is that the issue at its root is societal in nature - how do
you get people to care more about being right than about holding opinions that
fit their narrative of the world, or their own ego? I'm not sure there's an
answer to that.

~~~
onion2k
_My default reaction would be yes, a curated internet, fact checked for
accuracy would be better._

I'm the opposite. I'd rather have a free, open web that's full of lies and
misinformation, but with a population who understand it's like that and
question what they see.

Something based on your default position is probably easier to implement.

~~~
petewailes
How would you educate people to fact check and question? I'd love a good
mechanism for this.

~~~
soapdog
At Mozilla we are running a program to teach Web Literacy and new digital
skills called "Mozilla Clubs" [1] it is based on hands-on activities that are
participatory in nature. Basically a group of people that meets regularly to
learn and teach about the web in an inclusive and fun way.

Here is our activity aimed to teach about fact checking and credibility:

[http://mozilla.github.io/mozilla-club-activity-kraken-the-
co...](http://mozilla.github.io/mozilla-club-activity-kraken-the-code/)

Be aware that this is aimed at a young crowd but it works with any group. It
is a very simple activity but it has all the basis needed to understand that
not all the stuff online is gold.

This is just one activity in our "Web Basics I" curriculum. This set of
activities aim to teach the basics of Web/Internet understanding and
mechanics.

[1]: more info about Mozilla Clubs at:
[http://teach.mozilla.org/clubs](http://teach.mozilla.org/clubs)

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SRSposter
>Otlet hoped that this new system would allow for a grand unification of human
knowledge, and entirely new forms of information. But neither he nor his
Mundaneum survived the ravages of World War II. After invading Brussels, the
Nazis destroyed much of his life’s work, removing more than 70 tons worth of
material and repurposing the World Palace site for an exhibition of Third
Reich art. Otlet died in 1944, and has remained largely forgotten ever since.

Thats just sad, really tragic.

~~~
czam
What's even worse is that even today Belgium fails to realize what a great
cultural heritage they have in Paul Otlet's work. The remainders of his
collection are dumped in a museum in the city of Mons which completely misses
the chance to explain the originality and reach of Otlet's work and ideas.

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Aardwolf
Off topic but still related:

When opening this nautil.us page, it turns out to be one of the MANY websites
that show a modal javascript "popup" after a few seconds of reading the
article.

We're back to the year 1999 with the popups.

I found no plugin for firefox that blocks those (and only those plus EU cookie
warnings, I want other JS to run). Does anyone know one? What is the correct
word to search for (it's not really a popup)?

Thanks!

~~~
insin
It looks like Fanboy's Annoyance List [1] would have blocked it with this
rule:

    
    
        nautil.us###adpayload
    

There's a checkbox in uBlock Origin's settings dashboard to enable this list.

[https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/](https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/)

~~~
Aardwolf
Thanks! Helps against the nautilus one. Not at "yesmagazine.org" unfortunately
:)

I wonder how possible it is to make something more advanced that blocks these
things programmatically by detecting the behaviour (rectangular thing in
center modally popping on top of large amount of text).

~~~
tajen
What about the "reader view", either the one of iOS either Pocket or Evernote?

~~~
soapdog
There is also the "reader view" of Firefox. This is present on all Firefox
browsers so it works on Mac OS X, Linux, Windows and Android.

More info at: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-
clu...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-
web-pages)

PS: This is not the pocket thing.

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tudorw
So can we point a deep learning network at a digitised library, teach it the
Dewey decimal system then get it to classify web content?

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ilaksh
Of course we don't want one curated internet. Unless 'we' are a repressive
government.

Leave it open and allow people and companies to create different curations.

But there is room to promote things like Linked Data or the like.

But I can imagine a type of language with less ambiguity than natural language
that would be more easily machine-processable and indexable. Like Attempto
Controlled English or something more elegant and not an offshoot of English.

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nekopa
Off-topic: This sentence really caught me:

 _Personal liberation, empowerment, and revolutionary rhetoric—all deeply
American traits—_

As an American, I feel like these are no longer deeply American traits, and
that makes me sad...

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dctoedt
Wasn't Yahoo's original vision much like this --- a curated Internet (but
without the Dewey Decimal System-like numerical taxonomy)?

