The current state of the web & tech in general is not great…
But there are people out here, trying to make it better. And they’ve got some great ideas! Here’s a couple of them.
The IndieWeb aims to be a “people-oriented” alternative to the “corporate web”. They want you to abandon the corporate silos of social media sites and make your own corner of the internet (like this site!). One where you are in control of everything. You decide what people see and how they see it. And no one can stop you!
You should probably go do that! But first…
You might want to be local-first! The idea here is that the data you are working on is always stored on your device. This means you own the main copy of the data. This let’s you work faster and work offline without any issue. Even when the servers are long gone, you can still use the software and keep all your data!
Everything still works well online. Syncing between devices and collaborating with peers can all still be there. But the cloud is no longer the source of truth, your device is.
Computers exist in the real world. The real world is fuzzy and unreliable. That’s why it’s important to be robust. So you can actually do your work. Only then should you worry about being correct or efficient.
As the robust-first creed goes:
First be robust
Then as correct as possible
Then as efficient as necessary
The tech world moves fast, burns a lot of resources and leaves a lot of waste. Both physical and digital.
We should strive to make things last, make them consume less & re-use as much as possible.
Build in the open, share as much as possible. Foster diversity & build community.
Building on that, the web should be cheap. Not free (because nothing really is), but cheap.
Cheap to access, cheap to maintain, cheap to contribute & cheap to leave.
Keep it cheap.
The web should be a place for humans built by humans.
People shouldn’t be tracked, flooded with spam and ads, or replaced by bots.
It should be a safe, secure & reliable place centered around humans.
Honestly, there’s too many others to count. And more are being added every day…
One fictional frog felt the same way and exclaimed:
NO MORE IDEAS
WE HAVE ENOUGH
… and so they came up with another idea. It’s the tadi web and it combines ALL Better computing ideas together.
And since it’s all the ideas, it’s obviously the best idea, and that’s why we need to follow it! (In all seriousness though, this sentiment of “no more ideas” spoke to me greatly. And me stumbling on this is the reason I’m even here, writing this.)
Long live the tadi web!
Let’s explore how can we make it better.
There are also other topics in the garden. Take a look!