Re: <nettime> The World Wide Web 30 years later: We Wove a Tangle (Guardian Editorial)

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 4:40 AM Prem Chandavarkar <prem.cnt@gmail.com> wrote:

A fundamental change is what Hossein Derakshan points out here - the foundation of the web experience has changed from the hyperlink to the stream.

https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a426

It's a touching article, though most will find it quaint. Discursive streams of consciousness had made idiosyncratic writers wildly popular in a text-based medium. After the dotcom crash of 2000, the Silicorps had to become profitable. In 2005 the targeted image-stream began to emerge. The web was soon dominated by a system of control far beyond TV. The writers now disappeared from view. To pursue their intellectual development they would have to invent new forms of discipline, and struggle to fit within smaller and more restrictive echo-chambers, whether territorial, institutional or political.

I feel lucky to have enjoyed the broad audiences of the blog era. And equally lucky not to have gone down the desperately self-seeking Facebook route. Long ago in his book Things, Georges Perec showed that capitalist products do not magically create a life worth living. La vie est ailleurs.

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