💾 Archived View for alexisgaming95.cities.yesterweb.org › internet.gmi captured on 2024-02-05 at 09:22:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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The internet landscape nowadays is rapidly evolves everyday, like making newspaper articles. In the past century, we made amazing feats like flying or landing in the moon. You might consider the counterculture revolution to be influencial. But none of those compared to the World Wide Web or the Web in shorter terms.
So a bit of history here, but here's a story on how was web created. It all starts in mid to late 1980s where software makes hyperlinks to certain things like help or documentation. One day, Sir Tim-Berners Lee was researching something. He was creating the first web server. Then in 1989, he actually made a HTTP server to connect to a client. Months followed and he laid the groundwork of what the Web would essentially become. In 1990, he created WorldWideWeb for NextSTEP (later renamed to Nexus to avoid confusion with the Web itself), which is the first ever browser, server program and a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Later, with an assist from an intern, they made Line Mode Browser. It was included into libwww, which gave foundations to other browsers to come. One of them is Lynx, as it is the oldest browser to still be maintained, and one of the popular text browsers.
The next step of the creation and sparking the WWW boom. Some guys at NCSA were seeing VoilaWWW, one of early browsers. Then two guys was interested into making something like it, so they made Mosaic. It was originally for the X Window System for Unix based systems but later ported to Mac OS and Windows. One of the creators left NCSA, asked some guy at Silicon Graphics, and four University students to make Netscape Navigator (originally called Mosaic, then Mosaic Netscape then simply Netscape after some treats from NCSA because they were using the Mosaic name), which is the intial foundation of Mozilla Firefox. The Mosaic browser was also licensed to Microsoft via Spyglass (which is more like a reseller), which became Internet Explorer. The rest is history.
Now back to the current times. The Web, just like I said before is constantly evolving every single day. More websites being created, more buying domains, more hosting their own website. This rapid evolution wasn't like having no consquences, no no no.
I'm introducing to you three things: hidden surveilance, Web3 and crypto, and what is Yesterweb.
Now, you might think, wait a minute, what do you mean in hidden surveilance?
Hidden surveilance in this context, is sneaky trackers hidden in cookies or the website itseof to gather more data from you, essentially making an almost complete profile of you. Your age, sexuality, interests, everything. The main bad guys of this was Google and Facebook (now called Meta). Google might be popular but the main source of it's revenue was Google Ads. Ads in todays world, is like an overattractive girlfiend, following your steps like what are doing, what purchases do you made, what searches do you made, what videos do watch etc. Facebook on the other hand is a social media platform as we know it, but nowadays it's more like a flytrap. You browse your Facebook feed, you might see ads for something they thinks you want.
Here's an example: You chatted your friend, asking about buying a SNES. Later on, you saw ads on Facebook for a SNES, and related stuff. Scary right? The problem is, that companies make it vague about their belief on your privacy, for example Apple. Apple do protect their user's privacy, but at what cost? The other problem is those big tech companies lobby hard to keep their scummy pratices. I could see a "US gov't vs. Microsoft" lawsuit again, but they would be not be put in jail. Google on the other hand, has a parent company, Alphabet Inc. They're the second largest internet company in the world and Google by itself is the largest and widely used search engine. But the things are looking bright, like the time FCC sees Meta's strange behavior, and more stuff.
Web3 was coined by the co founder of Ethereum, it is supposed to be a decentralized online ecosystem with the same tech as crypto and NFTs. Now the problem was this, they're going to restrict freedom in the current Web.
The problem was into enviromental suistainability, the problems with the crypto community itself and artificial scarity, among others.
Now we delve into a topic that is a buzzword since 2021: non fungible tokens. Non fungible tokens or NFTs in layman's terms was an unique photo of something (for example, apes), and trying to sell their digital signature. It's more like buying the deed for a land, not the land itself. The main problems of NFTs are the sheer enviromental impact. Mining crypto requires a lot of computential power, since mining crypto was mainly done into a graphics card. Mining crypto in general produces a lot of heat and it is a waste of electricity, some even bought power plants for mining crypto. The enviromental im,pact of NFTs and crypto in general is pretty massive.
The worser form of NFTs were NFT games. I must admit, people in my family does play them, but I can't do something to change their minds. NFT games are popular, due to the success of Axie Infinity months ago. Axie Infinity is a game where you strategically place cards, so your Axies can deal damage to the enemies. But the application process is a convoluted by itself, first you must get a "scholarship", wait for it to be approved, then set up your Ronin Wallet and Axie Infity account, with your starter Axies, after that download the game from the official website, then play. Initial hype was massive, it was featured in a local TV show called "Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho". The initial price of SLP back then was staggering high, but nowadays, it's on rock bottom. That points to the next problem about NFTs.
My next point about NFTs is the early adopters and whales (note that keyword), since those people is the high priority in crypto projects. Those people has higher chances of being rich. It's like a Ponzi scheme in a way, where the top (early adopters abd whales) getting the most money out of crypto while people in the bottom will get no money to becoming almost bankrupt. It's like the economic ladder, and you wouldn't get into the top.
The other thing about crypto and NFTs in particular, is creating artificial scaricity. Artificial scaricity is the act of creating scaricity out of an infinite resource. Since a normal jpeg file can be downloaded, copied, and reuploaded, the crypto guys made some artificial scaricity by the "proof of work" concept, which in layman's term, just the digital signature of the original work. This line of random letters is important but there's a lot of exploits on that concept. The one thing NFT bros hate is screenshotting NFTs. This would make the image essentially worthless.
There's many projects those are attacking crypto and Web3. One of them is Extremely Fungible Tokens, which is made by the omotone guy and there's Yesterweb, which I'll talk about in a bit.
NFTs and Web3 was essentially making web private, like Nestlé tries to privatize water, I mean web is more just a fad nowadays, as this is now essential in this pandemic situation, like for example, learning or work from home. This whole thing is the main fundemental of the metaverse, which is straight out 1984 itself because you will never know what happen to your data.
The Yesterweb community was comprised of average people who uses internet and make actually cool stuff than corporate shit. These guys believes the internet is community driven, That's what the internet is all about. creativity. Most websites by the 90s are full of crazy things like GIF animations and wacky buttons. The community on Discord is fun, the discussions are good enough and the community itself is pretty good. You can also make goo sites if you know some basic HTML and CSS! You might learn some ideas on your own website! If you want to join this community, check out their website!
They have a links directory, a radio, a zine and many, many interesting stuff! It is the community that you should join if you want the web to still be free!
That's all that I can talk about today, I might update my website and stuff but see you then!