I think there is a cultural disconnect between those of us who watched the birth of the modern Web and the generation of entrepreneurs that are executing in the ubiquitous Internet post-DotCom crash markets. In the late 80s and early 90s, if you didn't cooperate, there just weren't enough users to gain anything like critical mass. So standards were open, people shared code, we had great fun bootstrapping the World Wide Web, and the accolades and rewards that came from that seemed like "free money" because most of us would have done the work just for the thrill of it and the technical challenge. The flood of institutional capital into the Internet completely changed everyone's focus from "what can I do to ensure my spot in this community?" to "how much can I grab before my 15 minutes are up?"
I don't think there are many visionaries left with the altruistic bent required to act as if it was still 1993. I think what we have at best are opportunistic visionaries who are content to jam their vision down the community's throat until it hurts - either us or them. I might be overly cynical, but I don't think so. I think the rules of the game are so different now that we'll never have the degree of pan-Internet cooperation that we saw 15 years ago. Too much of someone else's money is at stake for the altruistic visionary to flourish. And the number of people who will reach the "I'm rich enough not to care about investors and shareholders" as a percentage of Internet cognoscenti is just too small now to buck the trend.
dave
· 4 months ago
I know what you're saying Chuck, but there are some of us left. I'm meeting a lot of them around the rssCloud project, which you were part of the inspiration for that got me going again. Remember all the emails you sent me when no one was listening. Every time I got one I groaned to myself that it's hopeless, but somewhere along the line I got my hope back. It could be that I'll get screwed. It sure is what happened around OPML -- when I decided to try to make that go, it attracted all kinds of people who thought they would make all the money and foreclose on all the seeds I was planting. It got so disgusting that I just threw in the towel. But I have a sense that won't happen this time.
cshotton
· 4 months ago
:)
dave
· 4 months ago
Attaboy
nbradbury
· 4 months ago
I'm re-learning your first bit of wisdom at this very moment, as I'm forced to completely rewrite some code (Google Reader sync) that I made far too complicated the first time around.
sreiser
· 4 months ago
My Second Law of programming is "Always plan on throwing the first implementation away", which scares people. But like you say once you finish something and walk away from it and have to live with it, a more elegant solution always presents itself.
I'm starting to deal with the URL shortening problem for my personal content. As I import content I've contributed to twitter. friendfeed, etc I'm expanding and storing any shortened URLs where possible.
a web developer
· 4 months ago
After coding for the last year straight on a project I've learned that it takes a surprising amount of effort, architecture and refactoring to produce an application that is both usable and useful (to others). Otherwise, I would have been done 8 months ago.
Joseph Smarr
· 4 months ago
Well said, Dave, the part about caring for the web while you're able to make an impact really stuck with me. At least I derive some hope from the increased focus on contributing open source software and supporting open standards where possible. In both cases, most companies have found a "selfish motive" to support this work that is also very good for the web at large (e.g. others will help support and improve it, it'll help us hire people, it will lower barriers to building integrations with others, etc.) but that came after the advocacy of people who could tell it was just very good for innovation in general to have companies do this. Hopefully the same can happen more broadly for things like URL shorteners!
dai_vernon
· 4 months ago
This is exactly what I believe.
Thejesh GN
· 4 months ago
Vey well said, Dave. Specially point number 1.
vk77de
· 4 months ago
> Why they don't care about ecology of the web now...?
It seems it is an issue of group psychology.
They are caught up in group dynamics of their company, in immediate interactions with the people nearby. Most of the energy goes into the local group and the mental scope left is not sufficient for greater issues
iamronen
· 4 months ago
Care is the underlying issue, it's been an issue with business before the web, and like many things online it has escalated drastically and it's a direly missing ingredient.
I think the question "why?" is a dead-end and doesn't really matter. The question I then turn to is what to do? The best I've come up with so far is to: 1. have faith 2. disassociate myself from people/businesses/web-services that don't (proactively, consistently and passionately) care 3. associate myself (work and support) people who do care 4. be understanding - economy and money & the like are under serious attack by human nature and mother nature, they are suffering terrible blows, and they are struggling to hang on, they fail to recognize that it's time for them to change ... and they will hang on for dear life ... change is like that 5. be patient
would be nice to have a "Caring" badge for the web next to all those "Security" badges
Thank you for this post
Tatsawaya Raikyu
· 4 months ago
carbon offsets? biochar. (also helps with topsoil depletion.) fresh water? solar vacuum distillation, or away from an ocean, wind-driven dehumidifiers. hypoxic zones? undersea aeration.
All Comments
I don't think there are many visionaries left with the altruistic bent required to act as if it was still 1993. I think what we have at best are opportunistic visionaries who are content to jam their vision down the community's throat until it hurts - either us or them. I might be overly cynical, but I don't think so. I think the rules of the game are so different now that we'll never have the degree of pan-Internet cooperation that we saw 15 years ago. Too much of someone else's money is at stake for the altruistic visionary to flourish. And the number of people who will reach the "I'm rich enough not to care about investors and shareholders" as a percentage of Internet cognoscenti is just too small now to buck the trend.
I'm starting to deal with the URL shortening problem for my personal content. As I import content I've contributed to twitter. friendfeed, etc I'm expanding and storing any shortened URLs where possible.
It seems it is an issue of group psychology.
They are caught up in group dynamics of their company, in immediate interactions with the people nearby. Most of the energy goes into the local group and the mental scope left is not sufficient for greater issues
I think the question "why?" is a dead-end and doesn't really matter. The question I then turn to is what to do? The best I've come up with so far is to:
1. have faith
2. disassociate myself from people/businesses/web-services that don't (proactively, consistently and passionately) care
3. associate myself (work and support) people who do care
4. be understanding - economy and money & the like are under serious attack by human nature and mother nature, they are suffering terrible blows, and they are struggling to hang on, they fail to recognize that it's time for them to change ... and they will hang on for dear life ... change is like that
5. be patient
would be nice to have a "Caring" badge for the web next to all those "Security" badges
Thank you for this post
fresh water? solar vacuum distillation, or away from an ocean, wind-driven dehumidifiers.
hypoxic zones? undersea aeration.