LAN the Internet Again
Metadata
Highlights
- Sometimes, I would get up at 2am and sneak downstairs to my laptop to figure out which cool new plugins and mods we could add and combine without completely crashing the game. I sneaked because I was only allowed 45 minutes of computer time after school.
- Note: this is so incredibly cute and resonant
- I cried because in the last week before winter break, some random person joined and completely blew up the server with TNT and we didn’t know backups were a thing.
- Note: this is very good juxtaposition
- just as easily as a piece of local state.
- Note: kinda hard to parse, “as easy as any other variable?”
- to
- Magic.
- Note: i feel like an image here would make it very clear
- When I look at the web today, it feels like an abandoned mall. All I see are the echoes and ephemeral traces of strangers and friends, occasionally bumping into someone as they type a message in response to a post.
- Note: this feels a lil fatalist to me, i would love to see how it highlights that there is still beautiful stuff but it is somehow lacking soul or hidden away in secret gathering places or like what is causing it to feel that way despite all the good stuff that is happening?
- Unfortunately the way the web is designed, it makes it pretty difficult to do all the collaborative software I dreamed would be possible when I was a kid.
- Note: why? maybe elaborate in footnote but worthy of some context here
- It is not enough for some engineers to fully design a protocol to try to solve all of this, but rather to make it possible for the average layperson to be able to change and adapt software for their own needs. To make software not like a professional chef, but a home cook
Cozy software
cozy eternal beta test mode
re: digital mindfulness! Not everything needs to be built at scale — sometimes it can just…
12/13/2022
.
New highlights added December 14, 2022 at 6:41 AM
- a tiny
- Note: remove a? also a link would be nice :D
- Writing a web service for use by your friends should not be a form of combat, where you spend your days worrying about XSS attacks or buffer overflows. You should be focused on creating something new and wonderful in a place without bad people hounding you.
- A safe small space of people we trust, where we can coexist away from the prying eyes of the multi-billion-person internet.
- Note: hmm away feels wrong to me, it feels more like an alternative form of existence on the internet. like maybe what would it look like to replace these huge noisy spaces with these
- This is different in that LAN here does not necessarily mean closely geolocated, but rather close in social and trust space.
- Note: how does this happen without having the effect of needing to specify every single “close friend” like you do with the social media apps
- These local networks will allow much more home-cooked and casual software to emerge. More people willing to run websites, servers, and fun-apps from old laptops and phones
- Note: hmm but just having the network doesn’t lead to this — how can people actually participate on those networks?
- Completely private common spaces often allow users to put whatever and allow people can construct their own digital nooks and cozy spaces.
- Note: how does this avoid the dynamic of another abandoned discord? how do you get people to actually care about the space and take care of it?
- Join us as we write about what it would be a like to make these fictions become reality. Let’s make the web feel local and multi-player again. Let’s LAN the internet again.
- Note: we should have somewhere that can direct ppl to contact us or submit things
title: LAN the Internet Again
author: jzhao.xyz
url: https://jzhao.xyz/posts/web-is-better-together/
date: 2022-12-27
source: reader
tags: media/articles
LAN the Internet Again
Metadata
Highlights
- Some stubbornly kept their little hypertext gardens but doing so was a radical act rather than the norm. We, as citizens of the internet, have lost our ability to shape it and make it a home. (View Highlight)
- It seems that we’ve reached the inevitable conclusion of optimizing “connecting with each other” to the extreme. With no feedback system for users to have a say or improve the conditions, the web is quickly spiralling into something that doesn’t do all that good of a job. The thing that the web originally was meant to do – enable people to meaningfully meet and worth with each other – is harder than ever. Perhaps we might carve out a bit of space for those again? (View Highlight)
- Agentic software embodies a Hundertwasser flavour of design where:
• The resident has access to the same tools as the architect.
• Everything is writeable, everything is rewriteable.
• People can solve their own problems. (View Highlight)
- I spent a lot of time around university-aged students first learning software engineering and there is a really large gap between how easy it is to get a static website on the web and how difficult it is to add a database to it. This, for most people, is where they decide that software is too difficult and give up.
It has become so difficult to learn that it has almost killed software’s viability as a tool for expression. Imagine if, every time you cooked a meal for your friends or family, world-class critics came in to judge and prod at your food. Or if, every time you wanted to write a letter to your partner, the postal service would refuse to send it if it contained even a single grammatical error. (View Highlight)
- Maybe we bring back the philosophy of LANs, but rather than networks be based on closeness in physical distance bounded by routers, what about LANs in social and trust space?
The internet is a network of networks. This is true at the level of hardware and infrastructure, but less so for the applications we depend so heavily on. What if we also made the web a network of networks? And users could be a part of multiple networks at once? (View Highlight)
- A safe small space of people we trust, where we can go and rest, a safe harbour from the multi-billion-person internet for when we want to feel cozy and safe. (View Highlight)
title: “LAN the Internet Again”
author: “jzhao.xyz”
url: ”https://jzhao.xyz/posts/web-is-better-together/”
date: 2023-12-19
source: hypothesis
tags: media/articles
LAN the Internet Again
Metadata
Highlights
- Sometimes, I would get up at 2am and sneak downstairs to my laptop to figure out which cool new plugins and mods we could add and combine without completely crashing the game. I sneaked because I was only allowed 45 minutes of computer time after school.
- Note: this is so incredibly cute and resonant
- I cried because in the last week before winter break, some random person joined and completely blew up the server with TNT and we didn’t know backups were a thing.
- Note: this is very good juxtaposition
- just as easily as a piece of local state.
- Note: kinda hard to parse, “as easy as any other variable?”
- to
- Magic.
- Note: i feel like an image here would make it very clear
- When I look at the web today, it feels like an abandoned mall. All I see are the echoes and ephemeral traces of strangers and friends, occasionally bumping into someone as they type a message in response to a post.
- Note: this feels a lil fatalist to me, i would love to see how it highlights that there is still beautiful stuff but it is somehow lacking soul or hidden away in secret gathering places or like what is causing it to feel that way despite all the good stuff that is happening?
- Unfortunately the way the web is designed, it makes it pretty difficult to do all the collaborative software I dreamed would be possible when I was a kid.
- Note: why? maybe elaborate in footnote but worthy of some context here
- It is not enough for some engineers to fully design a protocol to try to solve all of this, but rather to make it possible for the average layperson to be able to change and adapt software for their own needs. To make software not like a professional chef, but a home cook
Cozy software
cozy eternal beta test mode
re: digital mindfulness! Not everything needs to be built at scale — sometimes it can just…
12/13/2022
.
- a tiny
- Note: remove a? also a link would be nice :D
- Writing a web service for use by your friends should not be a form of combat, where you spend your days worrying about XSS attacks or buffer overflows. You should be focused on creating something new and wonderful in a place without bad people hounding you.
- A safe small space of people we trust, where we can coexist away from the prying eyes of the multi-billion-person internet.
- Note: hmm away feels wrong to me, it feels more like an alternative form of existence on the internet. like maybe what would it look like to replace these huge noisy spaces with these
- This is different in that LAN here does not necessarily mean closely geolocated, but rather close in social and trust space.
- Note: how does this happen without having the effect of needing to specify every single “close friend” like you do with the social media apps
- These local networks will allow much more home-cooked and casual software to emerge. More people willing to run websites, servers, and fun-apps from old laptops and phones
- Note: hmm but just having the network doesn’t lead to this — how can people actually participate on those networks?
- Completely private common spaces often allow users to put whatever and allow people can construct their own digital nooks and cozy spaces.
- Note: how does this avoid the dynamic of another abandoned discord? how do you get people to actually care about the space and take care of it?
- Join us as we write about what it would be a like to make these fictions become reality. Let’s make the web feel local and multi-player again. Let’s LAN the internet again.
- Note: we should have somewhere that can direct ppl to contact us or submit things