I see on Google that the World Wide Web is 30 years old today. When a person turns 30 that is the age at which they have to face the fact that they are actually grown up. So is the WWW grown up? I suppose it has and that's actually a little sad.
Who would have thought that one day we would be nostalgic for the way the Web used to be? Sure, it's a lot better now than it used to be and much of the cool stuff is still out there but these days most of us are like kids in the world's biggest library who just sit in the corner and gossip and taunt the kids at the next table and never even look at a single book. Oh well, you can improve the Web but there's not much you can do about people.
If I had to pick one thing I miss from the "good old days" of the Web - this might seem strange but the thing miss most is badly designed websites. Oh, they still exist but you never just accidentally stumble upon them like you used to. Fortunately, there are lists:
Web Pages That Suck
Top 50 Worst Website Designs
Top 10 Worst Websites
And a single website that proudly calls itself The World's Worst Website Ever
I feel better now. The World Wide Web that we have long known and loved is still alive. We just have to get away from Twitter and Facebook once in a while and look for it.
I miss webrings. One of the very first "fun" things I did on the WWW was to run through the "Free Knitting Patterns Webring" - a few proto-blogs, some sites that were all ASCII but had typed-up patterns, a few sites belonging to shops.
ReplyDeleteThere used to be a site called Woolworks.org that was just a compendium of typed knitting patterns you could print out; I guess it's gone now, I tried looking for it and could not find it any more.
I also miss when there used to be more craftblogs. Now most of the blogs left are political and I don't read those as much.
I had forgotten about webrings. It seems like Facebook and Twitter killed everything that was fun on the Internet. Don't get me wrong; I really like Twitter but it seems like there should be room for all.
DeleteThere are still a lot of sewing blogs. Most of them don't post very often though.