Long time ago, someone dreamed a decentralized computer network. Raw information zipping through the wires from PEER2PEER, teaching and learning. The biggest library ever dreamed. I don't think I'm the best to explain all of this, so here you have better places to jump to:
That dream has died.
We lost the static IPv4 addresses. The domain names are paid and centralized. All the data has quicly migrated to centralized and private servers, locked in timebombed technologies. The forums have become Discord servers, the IRC chats Whatsapp groups...
The existence of an independent and goodwill-based web is endangered: threatened by the never-ending technology race which makes the websites more difficult and expensive to set up, by the overwhelming commercial advertising pressure, and soon by dissymetric networks, Network Computers, proprietary networks, broadcasting, all aiming at the transformation of the global citizen into a consumer. The computer press, so greedy for advertising coming from companies who make their profit out of the great wealth of the free indie web, is only fascinated by the technical and economical challenges of the Internet and has deliberatly decided to pass over its cultural dimension in the silence: magazines announce shortly the death of pioneer websites and basically never write more than a couple of lines about independent initiatives in comparison with the full-feature articles about any soap vendors new sites. According to them, creating one’s own site is a pathetic and secondary initiative compared to all the opportunities offered by online commerce.
This is a silly website that you may relate to... that sort of embodies some of the frustrations I have with modern web. I definitely have a LOT more to say about things like this, about commercialization and "Web3", about modern social media platforms, about the "old internet" and nostalgia, about efficiency, about profilicity, it goes on and on and I would like to keep this page readable.
But things dont have to be this way, not everything is lost. The old information is still there, and many are trying to add to it. From Gemini and Gopher to IPFS
IPFS in particular seems pretty amazing. The idea is basically discoverable torrents, a network of nodes freely hosting redundant copies of the same information.
Right now, I'm planning on setting up a Raspberry Pi as a IPFS node (there is an amazing tuto here) to host this page. It's much easier than attempting a full web server, and seems safer and harder to hack (so I hope).
Resources (will be added onto)
Jenny Odell, author of "How to Do Nothing" says it best: "The villain here is not necessarily the Internet, or even the idea of social media; it is the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction. It is furthermore the cult of individuality and personal branding that grow out of such platforms and affect the way we think about our offline selves and the places where we actually live."
The internet has become: