blogs.md (4831B)
1 # Blogs 2 3 Why would I start a blog in 2022? The short answer is 4 that I have recently enjoyed reading blog posts, and I thought it could be fun 5 to write some too. I don't have a good long answer, so I am just going to write 6 some random, loosely related thoughts in this post. 7 8 ## A history of the Web, starting from somewhere in the middle 9 10 Once upon a time, the World Wide Web was a place where people could freely 11 share infomation in the form of 12 [hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext). 13 Now it is a sort of universal application framework, largely run by 14 advertising companies. 15 In the last few months I have been reading, watching videos and thinking 16 about this change. I feel a sort of nostalgia for "the good old days" of the 17 Internet, although I did not experience most of them in person. 18 19 My first encounter with the Internet was in the early 2000's. My parents 20 were trying to set up a dial-up connection at home, and they told me very 21 clearly that I should not touch the phone for the following few minutes. Why 22 would a 7-8 year old want to use phone, if not because his parents explicitly 23 told him not to? So of course I picked it up and put it back down multiple 24 times, listening with curiosity to what many people my age and older remember 25 as "the Internet sound". My parents spent a lot of time troubleshooting that 26 day. 27 I only have a couple of memories of that dial-up connection - I was of course 28 not allowed to use it alone! I remember downloading a couple of pictures from 29 the official Pokémon website, which we later printed and hung somewhere. 30 I also remember trying to send an email to my dad, and my mom being 31 clearly stressed about me typing slowly and wasting minutes of dial-up time. 32 33 I really started using the Internet around 2006 or 2007. It was the time of 34 forums. I liked forums, because you could talk about specific topics with 35 people with common interests, and also browse old threads and learn 36 without intereacting directly with people. 37 38 Then social media arrived, and at first I liked those too. I made a Facebook 39 account in late 2009, and found it a convenient way to communicate with 40 my friends and classmates. Nowadays my Facebook feed seems more like a 41 collection of posts by people or pages I don't know that some old 42 friend commented on, and I think this is why I have basically stopped 43 posting there. 44 45 Anyways, later came smartphones - I got my first one in 2012 - and "apps". 46 This used to be just a fancy word for "smartphone program", but apps quickly 47 became the new way of accessing the Internet. Apps, and WebApps, now *are* 48 the Internet, and have been so for the last 10 years or so. We now work 49 on documents on the cloud, have video calls and share social media posts 50 via apps - or browsers - that need at least modern, but preferably 51 modern *and powerful*, hardware to run on, but are at the same time 52 totally dependent on some huge server or data center somewhere else in the 53 world. Of course, these services are run by the few huge companies that 54 can afford to develop and mantain such a system. 55 56 ## So what now? 57 58 I think it is cool that one can do all these things with the web. It is also 59 nice that the modern Internet is very accessible: anyone can sign up to any 60 social media platform they like and start sharing whatever they like, with 61 little to no barrier of entry. 62 63 But I think that we don't need all of this all the time. 64 We should not need an expensive modern device running a 65 [30 million lines of code](https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031) 66 to get some basic information from the web. 67 If people could put together a couple of lines of HTML in the 90's, we 68 can still do it today. 69 70 It would be nice to keep the "old Internet" alive. 71 Small websites with interesting information on whatever the owner decides 72 to talk about, no accounts, no subscriptions, no fancy endlessly-scrollable 73 home pages making your PC fan spin like your house is on fire. 74 The kind of websites that you can read and even create on a 13 year old 75 [netbook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook) - like I am doing now! 76 77 "This is cool, I would like to do it too but..." 78 79 * "...I don't know how" - Head to the 80 [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn) and start learning! 81 * "...I don't know what to write about" - 82 Read [this short blog post](https://www.romanzolotarev.com/website.html). 83 84 ## This blog 85 86 I have a few ideas on what to blog about. Mainly open source software and 87 related things. I don't think I'll write much about personal stuff. 88 In any case I will keep posting at a very irregular pace - don't expect 89 regular new "content"! 90 91 I think I'll keep writing in English - it is not my first language, but 92 writing in my mother tongue would immediately exclude 99% of possible 93 readers. And for the technical stuff I want to talk about it 94 does not make a big difference anyway.