The web I want vs. the one we have

These Web elegies are starting to become a real drag to read. And I don't mean to come across as flippant in saying this. I feel a sort of concern for the spirit of the authors of these kind of pieces, which are becoming more and more commonplace.

&gt; I later learned that the execs at most of the tech companies were similarly clueless on what made software possible, and basic stuff like trading off time for space and vice versa.<p>Why would an exec ever need to know about time&#x2F;space tradeoffs? That&#x27;s an engineering detail that is almost never relevant at the executive level. If you&#x27;re pitching a business idea at this level, you&#x27;re going to have a rough time.

&gt; <i>...a machine for finding people with similar interests and experience [is] the web I want back.</i><p>What&#x27;s wrong with dumb keyword text search for people using near-hapax interest- and experience-specific vocabulary?

Early in my career I was greatly surprised to realise it’s often not technical people at the top.

Isn&#x27;t the web still like this? It&#x27;s easy to find communities that are deep into pretty much anything.

I worked in a very small corner of the modern Silicon Valley area recently. I was surprised to see so many companies, VCs, and founders giving such a similar mystique to a certain youtuber&#x2F;streamer that i won&#x27;t name here.<p>Its very confusing to see people who have been in the industry for potentially decades more or less blindly following the whims of a person with very little real world experience in the industry to back up such strong, opinionated claims. Interesting to see based on the OP that its not necessarily a new phenomenon.

&gt; <i>PPS: Here’s a link to a location on Mastodon where you can read this piece.</i><p>Said link immediately redirects you back to Wordpress.

Too many I’s and they’s

This is like how my dad says SNL was awesome when he was 19 and sucked when I was 19. But I think it was awesome when I was 19 and sucks now that my kid is 19.

That he met Steve Jobs is the most important detail, justifying these aimlessly meandering ramblings.

I may be missing the point of this blog but I don&#x27;t think I am. I too miss the era of blogging but this isn&#x27;t it. The only thing this piece does is name drop--without having the courage to actually name names--and point out how those &quot;famous&quot; (we can&#x27;t judge, as they&#x27;re unnamed) people were so wrong back then and the writer was so right. The line that actually answers the title is a cliche and isn&#x27;t elaborated on: the web brings like-minded people together from all over the world.

&gt; They were smart and educated, but they were English majors or studied agriculture or business.<p>“Are you at all concerned about an uprising?”

Is Silicon Valley still like how the author describes it? I ask this as a Canadian considering moving down there. I want to go to a place where I feel understood.

<i>&gt; This is my second day of kitchen-table blogging using wordLand, WordPress and Mastodon, and I like it even more today than I did yesterday.</i><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;scripting.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;11&#x2F;132736.html?title=theWebLivesInWordpressAndMastodon" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;scripting.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;11&#x2F;132736.html?title=theWebLive...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;daveverse.wordpress.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;11&#x2F;my-new-writing-environment-does-textcasting&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;daveverse.wordpress.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;11&#x2F;my-new-writing-en...</a><p><pre><code> I have a writing tool I call wordLand, it connects directly to WordPress, and from there, one of my sites is hooked up to Mastodon via ActivityPub.. The reason I’m having so much fun with this mofo is that I have most of the features of textcasting now, and it’s all flowing out through Masto, and I’m not typing into a freaking tiny little text box! </code></pre> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;textcasting.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;textcasting.org&#x2F;</a><p><pre><code> Applying the philosophy of podcasting to text. Interop between social media apps based on the features writers need. </code></pre> A prototype of self-hosted editor that &quot;publishes&quot; format-appropriate versions to different social media sites, while the author retains copyright, data and compute control of the original source. By <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;davewiner.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;davewiner.com&#x2F;</a>, pioneer of weblogging, RSS syndication and more.

To be honest, if the author of this communicated pitches as ineffectively as this piece communicated the topic in its title, I am not surprised that whatever nameless gatekeeper he&#x27;s talking about passed on his pitch.<p>That&#x27;s not even to get into the fact that executives don&#x27;t necessarily need to understand software implementation details to size up an idea.<p>Very odd blog post.

Sorry, why is this on hackernews?