A lot of fuss and hot air has been respectively raised and blown about over the past few years about ‘Web 2.0’ like we had entered a new era of the internet. While I think that term is stupid, it is useful, and after thinking about the issue some, here are my thoughts on the matter. All the dates are generalized, all the evidence anecdotal (except where it’s not)

0.9 The Beta Web

1970s-1990

And DARPA said ‘let there be connectivity!’ and it was good.

A very long time ago, people decided that it would be neat if all of the computers in the world, which they had just invented, should be able to connect to each other. Since the only people that had computers were at major research universities and in the government (gotta love the military-industrial complex!), the scope was rather limited, but the idea was there. After their mind-control experiments failed, DARPA but their best mad-scientist minds to it and POOF! one computer was able to talk to another. It was like Graham-Bell had come back to life wearing a tie with a white shirt tucked into his very high-waisted pants, getting machines instead of people to talk to each other.

It was magical. It was glorious. And because it was solely in the hands of a very, very small group of very, very smart people who were the experts and only residents of this new field of computer networking, the nascent internet grew a small but particular and robust set of applications: email, IRC, BBS, USENET. Things that still exist today because they were made literally ex nihilo and they were made to work indefinitely, based on solid ideas that stand the test of time: letter-writing, conversations, community, and sharing. These are universally seen as good things.¹

But then came a modern Prometheus (and a Brit no less) to take computer networking to the masses. This is generally seen as a good thing.

1.0 The World Wide Web

1990-2003

And lo, Berners-Lee stole the connectivity from the gods and gave it to everyone.

Enter the beginning of the 90s. It’s a great time to be alive (assuming you live in America—it was kind of a crazy time for just about everywhere else). People are buying personal computers, which have pretty much overnight become affordable. People are playing solitaire on their Apple IIs and Windows 3.1 to learn how to click and drag. It is, once again, magical.

Enter Tim Berners-Lee of England and Robert Cailliau, who take the general principles of computer networking and say ‘hey! everyone needs to get in on this!’ They invent the term WWW and along with their compatriots, design what would become the internet, with URLs, HTTP, HTML, IPv4, DNS, and all of it. This too explodes pretty much overnight in a tidal wave of innovation (and exploitation, but that’s another story). Pretty soon in after browsers were invented you have big phone-book equivalents for websites, then eventually search engines. The internet looked like it will always look like in my childhood—awful, but full of possibility: terribly pairings of font color and background color, Times New Roman or even worse Comic Sans everywhere, spinning skull and dripping blood gifs, and oh so much new information. (GeoCities!) 

Innovation and experimentation was everywhere. Foremost of all was advertising and online business (BOOM! goes the dot-com). It’s kind of weird to think that this had to be invented, considering its ubiquity today. At about the same time Shockwave Flash and the advent of casual games came in quick succession and once someone invented the ad-blocker the web was pretty much perfect.

1.5 The Golden Age of Internet

2001-2005

And everyone who had ever been on the internet looked and beheld that it was good.

Most people skip this part when they talk about ‘Web 2.0’ really for no good reason. Or maybe they have a good reason, who knows. Not much to say here other than this: everything for just about everyone in relation to the internet) was pretty neat. Innovation took a back seat to consolidation (both vertically and horizontally, although not to the extreme levels that we see today and that I’ll talk about later) and there were a few huge internet powerhouses that everyone knew, used, and loved: Google for searching, Amazon for buying books (and things), and I’m sure there were some other things in there too.

2.0 The Social Web

2005-2015

And the Internet declared to its users, be fruitful, multiply and replenish my content, and that’s where things started to go downhill.

First off, I’m calling it right now: we’re going to phase out of ‘Web 2.0’ in the next three years. There is an oversaturation of social content that will, like the housing market in late 2008, implode. We’re already seeing major backlash against Facebook and the like, and while the internet will never stop being a social place (and let’s be clear—the point of the internet has always been social, to connect people), something far worse is coming.

Secondly, after that cryptic alarmist last clause, ‘Web 2.0’ is pretty cool. After PHP and SQL underwent major development and deployment and server storage space prices dropped to the floor to just about nothing, it was all of a sudden really easy to create an infinite number of logins for an infinite number of users. Lots of users meant lots of captive audiences made up of individuals all looking to share (again), form communities (again), converse (again), and write (again). Here we see the rise of reddit, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, along with literally millions of other knockoffs, variants, alternatives, and even some good ideas that just didn’t get off the ground (sorry, Quora). So many users using and using with each other. That’s what this iteration is all about.

Thirdly, I forgot to mention blogs. Not only do people have streamlined platforms (Blogger, WordPress, etc) with which to express their thoughts, but other people became enabled to interact with those posts through the comments (at least hypothetically. I have no pretensions about how high my blog readership is not, but still you’d expect a comment or two every once in a while). While the ‘blogosphere’ has gone out of vogue as of late, it’s still there and just as vibrant as ever. In fact, if you look at any website of any news outlet, you’ll see that all of them are now in essence blogs written by ‘professional’ ‘journalists’ who talk more about ‘facts’ than their opinions (or so we’d hope).

Fourthly, as we come to the closing years of the social web, we also have begun to see a series of ominous trends that signal a sea change in the focus and general idea of the internet. For this discussion, read ahead.

3.0 The Proprietary Web

2010-?

Yea verily I say unto you, the time draws nigh when ye must really look into privacy alternatives and open-source options if ye value your rights and security.

Trend 1: Governments. Way back in the Beta Web, I told you that the internet was invented by and wholly populated with really smart people who had real dedication to the myriad great things that a world-wide network of computers could accomplish. Many of these people happened to work for the government, but they were not the government. Today, various governments, pretending like 1) they know ‘what’s best’ for their subjects and 2) they know anything about net tech at all, endeavor to recreate the internet into something that they² can control.

This is profoundly stupid. The internet is a public resource, created by and for the public—hence the social web, a network of users at the core (as opposed to machines or websites like before, but none of those would exist without users anyway)—but not just the American or European or Chinese public; the everyone public. World-wide is in the damn name. Trying to put the internet genie into a New and Improved bottle just isn’t going to work—it’s only going to make people mad.

So why are they doing it? For reason one, look at the Great Firewall of China: information control. The Chinese government is scared of what its subjects might find in the open web, so they try to cut all the unwanted parts out. Because as of yet the average internet user is non-technical, this has been largely successful, however for those who want outside access and have a little bit of technical know-how, it’s actually quite easy to circumvent.

Reason two, look at America and Europe: corporate interest. The guiding principle, misguided as it is, behind bills like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, and any new ones that might crop up is the nebulous concept of ‘piracy:’ copyright holders have their panties in a twist because they imagine that they’re missing out on all kinds of profits above their already astronomical profits. There are quite a few problems here though. 1) piracy does not in fact have an adverse effect on sales; in fact, it helps drive sales in many cases, as many studies have shown.³ 2) governments and government officials are entrenched in the wallets of huge corporations that tell them to pull this crap. This brings us to a sub-trend.

Trend 1.5: Corporations. The main issue here is that when you deal with physical, analog copies of things, establishing and controlling copyright is fundamentally a straightforward thing. Doesn’t exactly make sense in the laws and rules that we’ve concocted to establish and control it, but it was easy to do. Now that we have this digital paradigm though, old ideas of copyright are invalid. Why? Because it takes zero physical resources (aside from a few bits of harddrive space) to make a digital copy of something. I can download a picture that someone else made and copypasta it until I fill up gigs and gigs of space. If I were doing that to, say, a physical book—making hundreds of unauthorized copies—I’d have to spend a lot of money and resources doing so and because the intent is probably to sell those new books, then I’d be breaking copyright law.

Thing is with digital copies, the overwhelming majority of ‘pirates’ download stuff for personal use, not to sell. It’s all for sharing. Just like making a mix tape, or burning a CD for a friend, going to the library, borrowing a movie from a friend. Groups like the RIAA and MPAA however are stupid and blind and just want to capitalize on a situation that they realize they cannot understand yet try to control anyway.

This trend was kind of a digression, though, so let’s get back to the meat. I’ll be happy to go on at great length about this though with you some other time.

Trend 2: Consolidation. I had mentioned that in the Golden Age there was some consolidation, some horizontal growth and some vertical purchasing. This has only gotten worse as time has progressed, as evidenced by Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for $2bil, which is an absolutely insane amount of money. Facebook, Apple, and Google have been the frontrunners here, sometimes innovating, lots of times just buying up startups. To the point where so many new tech companies exist solely to be bought by a big one for the payday, not giving a flip about their users, the quality of their product, or anything but $$. It’s shameful and kills innovation rather than promoting it.

What these trends are leading us to—both the shrinking/consolidation from within and the capping/bottling/controlling from without—are the development of robust, all-encompassing online eco- and operating systems. This is exciting and terrible at the same time.

Let’s look at Google. I use so many Google services daily it’s almost obscene: gmail, calendar, reader, +, android, chrome, maps, search, images, docs/drive, voice, youtube. What happens then, when Google decides that chrome won’t load a specific type of content? What happens when the government tells Google to censor their products to leave out specific content? Or look at Apple: it’s already stupidly hard to use any of their machines with software that Apple did not make themselves (and impossible to do much without iTunes these days). With so much pressure and consolidation and downright cutthroatiness, I fear that it’s well within reach for a number of competing online ecosystems to develop that are mutually exclusive. Maybe it’s farfetched, but I see too much control coming in the future, not freedom.

And this for me is a big problem. While it may never get as dire as I rambled about in that last paragraph, mutual exclusivity is probably going to be the next chapter in the internet’s history, and that is a very sad thing. As the freedom of the internet continues to be attacked however, I also foresee a marked rise in the number of people developing technical skills—or at least knowledge—in order to defeat, circumvent, thwart, and/or disrupt these disturbing trends. Already we’ve seen huge momentum against the aforementioned bills. That kind of thing is encouraging.

This has gotten more and more incoherent and sloppy the closer to 4am I’ve gotten. Sorry about that. Time for an abrupt ending.

Footnotes: 1. Unless you’re a fascist. 2. That’s the ominous ‘they.’ 3. They do exist, I just don’t want to find them for you.

Cross posted from http://blog.nathanielray.com/the-ages-of-the-internet | BLOG.NATHANIELRAY

I just finished reading a wonderful and hilarious and enraging and oh-so-right article on Cracked. Here is the very end:

I’m telling you from experience, watching political races [like a sports fan rooting for his favorite team] is addictive as shit. You have thousands of years of violent tribal instincts pumping through your veins, itching for a fight. That makes you an easy tool for manipulation, and every good politician and pundit knows how to push those buttons to make people march neatly in formation.

Don’t succumb. Or else you’ll start supporting the most bullshit legislation just because your guy is for it. Or you’ll start knee-jerk rejecting anything the other “team” proposes. Not because it’s bad for the country, but because you want to deny them a “win.”

It’s a poisonous way of thinking. It will lower your IQ, it will rot your ability to think critically about the subjects that really matter. It’s bad for you, it’s bad for democracy, it’s bad for the world. You have to be better and smarter than the person they think you are. Or else we’re all fucked.

The article before those last 3 paragraphs goes on to talk about the problem with trying to follow politics. Namely, the issue is that no one is bothering to tell you what the issues actually are. Rather than reporting on what bearing proposed legislation and ruling might have on real people, the media is hyperfocused on chalking up imaginary points on a CNN/Fox News chalkboard (now 100% digital with extra-large touchscreen!) and riling up their fanbases. Every “gaffe,” headline with a question mark, “blast,” crazy quote from a nebulous “lawmaker” or “adviser,” and “blow to” serve only to dish out more sensationalism and drama for some political team. Honestly I’m surprised that no one’s made “Team Donkey” and “Team Elephant” shirts yet.

In some ways, this is a reflection of how Democrat and Republican politicians themselves are represented/act. Now, we could go and try to blame it all on Nixon, Gingritch, and Norquist like this excellent and level-headed article which I encourage you all to read even if you are Republican, but it’s not entirely their fault; often, they can’t control their representation in the media. The problem for the media, however, is that 1) they’ve stopped doing actual journalism and may have even forgotten how it’s done at all and 2) sensationalism sells. Why try to educate your viewers, readers, or listeners when you’ll get more of them by shouting loudly and making fun of people on the other team?

For the person who’s actually concerned about all the crazy stuff actually going on with real bills and court decisions, it’s terribly hard to find actual news. And that’s a sad thing. It’s out there, though, you’ve just got to find it.

Cross posted from http://blog.nathanielray.com/horse-race-politics | BLOG.NATHANIELRAY

You may have noticed, should you have your ear to the tech-community ground, that the controversial CISPA bill was passed by the House in a rush job that included a few amendments to the bill that actually make it even more egregious. I’ll leave it to Tech Dirt to explain the ins and outs for you (you should check that article real quick if you’re in the dark about this).

So after the internet got its panties in a twist over PIPA and SOPA, being in my reading of the situation instrumental in the stoppage of both those bills, and the continuing and growing backlash against these bills’ European equivalent ACTA, along comes CISPA and I could feel the internet let out a sigh. “What the hell?” they shout. “We just did this, now you’re making us stand up for ourselves and our rights again?” Mark Rogers, who sponsored the bill, and the business interests that support him were dastardly with their timing, and I mean that in both the melodramatic sense of the word (I can just imagine some Koch-brother-type doing the 21st century Republican version of twirling his mustache while mwahahaing to himself) and in the deadly serious sense.

Why deadly serious? Because the struggle for rights is always deadly, whether you’re fighting to get them or to keep them. And when the rights under fire are the cornerstones of the entire American idea—freedom of speech and the right to privacy—people are going to be fueled by an overwhelming sense of betrayal: we the people, in order to form a more perfect union, elected representatives into government to protect our rights and speak for us, who in turn take every measure to disenfranchise, monitor, oppress, and subjugate us while protifing wildly from it.

It is the most disgusting scenario imaginable for our American context.

As such, I do not hesitate to name people like Mark Rogers, the Koch brothers, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Lamar Smith (the SOPA guy), Patrick Leahy (the PIPA guy), Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, and Obama as traitors. Traitors. That’s a heavy word, and one with serious consequences and reprecussions. Now, the four presidents might get off a little easier because in all honesty, to some extent I think they have no idea what they’re doing while in office.

Traditionally, traitors get publicly executed for their crimes, shamed forever in the annals off history. These days, they get bonuses, tax breaks, golden parachutes, and at the very most, slaps on the wrist.

That’s got to change. And we have to change it.

How? I propose a three-pronged approach.

1. Through the courts. Challenge silly laws and rulings like in the Citizens United case. Engage in jury nullifaction on a widespread basis. Never stop the class-action law suits against Goldman Sachs and other similar corporations, congressmen, senators, presidents and their advisors, the Federal Reserve, etc. If the courts are ruling in the favor of special interest groups, or have clearly been proven wrong like with Citizens United, then it is up to us to flood the justice system with our challenges to their rulings at every turn. (Don’t worry, your murderers and kidnappers and rapists will still have their time on the docket, so shut up with that argument.)
2. Through the vote, or better put, through the No Vote. While the Constitution doesn’t provide for official votes-of-no-confidence for the entire government (and why not? Oh, because the Constitution is extremely limited and terribly broken, sorry to break it to ya), we do have a few roads of recourse. In many states there are protocols for initiative, referendum, and recall where the people can overturn their government when it messes up. We can abstain from voting altogether—think, what kind of message would we be sending to congress, the president, and the world that we absolutely do not support any of them if voter turnout this November is below 20%? We can vote to oust those politicians who seem to be bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporate interests (although they seem to constitute a vast majority…). 
3. Through popular revolt. This is the last and most resonant option, that we can descend on DC and literally block the government from doing its job, and block them until we get the change we’re fighting for. Our internet petitions are meaningless (if the official White House petition to put the legalization of marijuana to a vote was casually dismissed by a low-lever staffer despite 700,000+ signatures, we know that nothing of a greater political weight will ever even be considered through that medium). Organizations such as MoveOn.org solicit your donations but in turn do nothing but get rich and feel good about themselves. We need to rise up; it is our responsibility, our calling as citizens. We are beginning to, with the Occupy movement getting the ball rolling, and should the unresponsive and oppressive government continue to push us towards that critical mass, the revolt will come sooner rather than later.

You may be asking yourself, “How did we get from CISPA, a bill ostensibly about stopping online pirates, to overthrowing the government?” Here’s the answer: CISPA is symptomatic of the concerted efforts of very rich, very powerful people with massive political leverage to remain rich and powerful. CISPA essentially nullifies the 4th Amendment on the internet (you know, the one that guarantees privacy and personal property and prevents unreasonable arrests and warrantless searches and seizures). We’ve already seen the 1st (both speech and assembly) trampled on by the police and the media with the Occupy movement; the 6th and 8th (speedy trial by jury and no cruel and unusual punishment) with Bradley Manning/Wikileaks; and the 10th (powers ot the states and people) with making corporations people. There’s 5 of our fundamental, guaranteed rights that are part of the Constitution of the United States of America that have been rendered meaningless. Half of the original set. And that’s all been within the last two years.

This country is broken, and it’s being pushed even further. I haven’t even talked about the growing income disparity or the economy or unchecked corporate consolidation or the problem of the Federal Reserve or the TSA or a host of any other things that are breaking us, pushing us further and further into a corner.

Sooner or later, we’re going to snap, and it’s not going to be pretty. If our voices continue to be denied and our persons continue to be surveilled and abused, then the fallout is going to be all the more worse.

So go call your congressmen, it never hurts. Get yourself educated on the issues, it never hurts (except your soul). Find an outlet and kindred spirits. But most importantly, get ready to fight, because big and scary things are going to be happening all around you very, very soon. If you think it’s already pretty bad, and if you think that the people have had the wind taken out of us, just remember: we haven’t even started.

Cross posted from http://blog.nathanielray.com/we-havent-even-started | BLOG.NATHANIELRAY

Tomorrow:

1. Go back over some Turkish poetry
2. Make a Russian lesson for Thursday
3. Buy comic books
4. Enjoy the great weather

After that:

1. Read some Ukrainian stories
   1. A short one by Коцюбинський
   2. The first few pages of Андрухович’s Московіада
2. Finish reading a book manuscript
3. Play lots of D&D
4. Write the synthetic essay for my MA portfolio
5. Ride lots of bikes
6. Enjoy the great weather

Cross posted from http://blog.nathanielray.com/to-do-list-for-the-last-day-of-things-before | BLOG.NATHANIELRAY

I very much enjoy reading. Especially fiction. It provides a unique kind of escape and fantasy, substantially different from film or theater, one that both requires and rewards imagination. Good authors paint beautiful pictures in your head with their words so that the world and characters and history and feel of the story become visible, tangible even. When an author creates a compelling world, I am reluctant to leave it. Even as I rush headlong through the pages, I try to soak up every word, pausing to mull over a curious phrase or a particularly striking image. Particularly, I enjoy the long ones, especially if there’s a whole long series of long books that hold my attention. Why is this? The easiest answer is because I don’t want it to end. There’s got to be an x-factor, some excellent quality that pulls me back in not only for each book, but for revisiting the series as a whole at a later date. Now, I think there’s an even deeper reason there too, but I’ll get there at the end. First I want to talk about my favorites.

I’ve just wrapped up the fifth book in the George RR Martin series A Song of Ice and Fire. The last few books have indeed been over the magic 1000 page mark. For me, this is the arbitrary magic number, because if a book crests a thousand, I know for a fact that the author (at the very least) is batting for the fences: there’s an epic quality, so much to the story that only 3 digits worth of pages cannot contain. This thrills me. The last books of ASOIAF can’t come swiftly enough—but first they have to be written, and I’m pretty certain we’re going to be getting at least 2000 more pages from Martin. Stoked.

An obvious mention here is Harry Potter. Now, there have been many detractors to this series, but you know what? It’s not bad. In fact, it gets pretty damn good at times (I’m looking at you, books 3 and 6). It has a host of well-developed (if archetypal) characters, a fleshed-out world with its own internal logic and mystery, and a rather cohesive overarching narrative. I haven’t read them since the 7th one came out, though, but I don’t think I’m ready to go back to #1 yet.

The series I’m looking forward most to (re)visiting is Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. My history with this series is rather odd. First, I read the fourth book before any of the others. Since I was about 14 at the time, my dear old dad took it upon himself to go through with white-out and take out all the naughty and blashpemous bits (including any mention of the gods, even in phrases like “by the gods”). I thought it was stupid then, I think it’s horrifying now. Do that to a book? God forbid. Never going to happen on my watch. Anyway, after that I checked out the first three from the library. My mom wasn’t too keen on the idea since she was of the opinion that King got his stories from Satan Himself, but I read them regardless and loved them. Then I re-read the fourth one, which is still probably my favorite, Wizard and Glass. 5-7 weren’t out then. In college, the fifth came out, and I read it and liked it, but I sped through that one so quick I barely remember any of it. By the time 6 and 7 were released, I had been so long away from it that I never made the time to get back to it.

That time is coming, though, and as soon as I wrap up my Master’s portfolio defense, I’m jumping back into Mid-World with both feet.

I’ll interject here about long books that are standalone, for these too draw me in. Problem is, I have a lot of these, but I haven’t had the time to get to them. I got 11/22/63 and 1Q84 for Christmas, but there was simply no time to read them before the semester began. All in good time though.

Ok, so going back to this deeper reason for loving the long books, and books in general (and by extension, film and theater and roleplaying games as well). There’s a quote by Dave Scott, the 7th man to walk on the moon (ASTRONAUTS ARE MY FAVORITE OF ALL!!!!!!!!). I think it gets to the heart of what I’m talking about, the part of the human existence that lives for this visiting of other worlds:

As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there’s a fundamental truth to our nature: man must explore.

Now, Hadley was the moon base for many of the Apollo missions, but replace “Hadley” with Oz, Barsoom, Mid-World, Hogwarts, Westeros, or anywhere and you’ve got it. This man—a man of science, accomplished, crazy smart, as all astronauts back in the early/glory days of space flight had to be—steps out of his lander and onto the surface of another planet. He can see the earth just sitting there in space, so small, the stars never having been ever so large. His friends have traveled here before (only six of them, true) and no doubt they told the most amazing, beautiful stories about their experiences there. And when he’s there, it is nevertheless so new, so awe-inspiring, so maginificent, and what does he say? Man must explore.

This is what fiction brings us: the chance to explore, to go out and experience new places, new people, new things. This is why fiction will never go extinct; the need to explore is a fundamental human trait. This is what makes fiction so great and lasting, and why I love reading it, even over and over again: I’ve found a place while exploring and it so captivates me that I never want to leave and that I want to share with everyone. I’m sure you’ve seen or heard me gush over a book—it’s because I had such a great time exploring, I want everyone else to come with me!

So read, my friends. Read. No matter what else you’ve got going on, there’s always 20 minutes at least that you can sneak in before you go to bed (for example) for you to explore every night. Don’t deny yourself that experience.

Cross posted from http://blog.nathanielray.com/books-of-inordinate-length | BLOG.NATHANIELRAY