A Series Of Tubes
February 6, 2007 6:19 PM Subscribe
This post was deleted for the following reason: posted earlier
Again.
posted by cillit bang at 6:21 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by cillit bang at 6:21 PM on February 6, 2007
Most early websites were made with HTML.
We'll need to rethink ... love.
The really terrible thing is that, as an assistant professor somewhere, taxpayers are actually paying him to spend time thinking about this nonsense.
posted by matthewr at 6:30 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
We'll need to rethink ... love.
The really terrible thing is that, as an assistant professor somewhere, taxpayers are actually paying him to spend time thinking about this nonsense.
posted by matthewr at 6:30 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
zombo 2.0
posted by Armitage Shanks at 6:39 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by Armitage Shanks at 6:39 PM on February 6, 2007
I tuned out as soon as I saw "Early websites were written in HTML".
More empty triumphalism. As one of the YouTube commenters noted, this is the same kind of stuff we were hearing from pundits just before the end of the 90s tech bubble.
This is Bubble 2.0. And bubbles have a habit of bursting.
posted by teferi at 6:52 PM on February 6, 2007
More empty triumphalism. As one of the YouTube commenters noted, this is the same kind of stuff we were hearing from pundits just before the end of the 90s tech bubble.
This is Bubble 2.0. And bubbles have a habit of bursting.
posted by teferi at 6:52 PM on February 6, 2007
Previously, unless this is a third draft.
So this is Double 2.0, then.
posted by dw at 6:55 PM on February 6, 2007
So this is Double 2.0, then.
posted by dw at 6:55 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by
posted by boo_radley at 6:57 PM on February 6, 2007 [3 favorites]
I tuned out as soon as I saw "Early websites were written in HTML".
Odd, I'm still writing websites in html. Does this make me retro?
posted by IronLizard at 7:01 PM on February 6, 2007
Odd, I'm still writing websites in html. Does this make me retro?
posted by IronLizard at 7:01 PM on February 6, 2007
I hate the web.
And I hate this video.
And I hate this thread.
And I hate this comment.
And I hate you all.
That is all.
posted by jeffamaphone at 7:01 PM on February 6, 2007 [2 favorites]
And I hate this video.
And I hate this thread.
And I hate this comment.
And I hate you all.
That is all.
posted by jeffamaphone at 7:01 PM on February 6, 2007 [2 favorites]
A blinding glimpse of the obvious.
No, wait, this may be useful. I'll show it to my cousin Earl, who was knocked out by a falling badger twenty years ago, and has been a coma from which he just awakened. He keeps trying to access the Compuserve forums with Tapcis.
I did like the music.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:29 PM on February 6, 2007
No, wait, this may be useful. I'll show it to my cousin Earl, who was knocked out by a falling badger twenty years ago, and has been a coma from which he just awakened. He keeps trying to access the Compuserve forums with Tapcis.
I did like the music.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:29 PM on February 6, 2007
Remember Felt Boards?
I miss 'em.
And you still can't beat the smell of a fresh new eraser.
My God. I'm turning into Andy Rooney.
posted by Dizzy at 7:34 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
I miss 'em.
And you still can't beat the smell of a fresh new eraser.
My God. I'm turning into Andy Rooney.
posted by Dizzy at 7:34 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
Mmmm erasersmell.
posted by Hildegarde at 7:45 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by Hildegarde at 7:45 PM on February 6, 2007
I did like the music.
You can download it free here.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 8:05 PM on February 6, 2007
You can download it free here.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 8:05 PM on February 6, 2007
I think 50s triumphalism was cooler, because it had terms like "space age" and "harnessing the power of the atom", and had all this new frontier adventure feeling to it. This stuff is all about introspection, involuteness, and recycling each others words to create the illusion of newness out of new arrangements of what is largely blather.
The real excitement of the internet hasn't changed since the early 90s: it's still all about immediacy, the annihilation of distance and the power of self-publishing and creating connections. All this is about is the fact that there's a lot more of it and you can shuffle it around in ways that are fancier than hyperlinking but not fundamentally different.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:42 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
The real excitement of the internet hasn't changed since the early 90s: it's still all about immediacy, the annihilation of distance and the power of self-publishing and creating connections. All this is about is the fact that there's a lot more of it and you can shuffle it around in ways that are fancier than hyperlinking but not fundamentally different.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:42 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
A Web 2.0 post without tags? Something is wrong here.
posted by o0o0o at 8:49 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by o0o0o at 8:49 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
I remember being amazed -- literally breathless with excitement and pleasure back in 1976 -- when I first twiddled one of those knobs on the Pong console my folks had bought, and the white rectangle on the righthand side of the screen moved. I'd actually moved something on the TV screen! I played with that thing until the plastic was worn smooth and shiny around the controller wheels.
I've never lost my excitement about pixels on screens, since. Lots of other things have excited me since (particularly sex, booze, rock and roll and wandering around the world), but I still remember that moment with the kind of soft-headed avuncular nostalgia that so annoys the young.
I suppose this connects to that, somehow. Linked, if not so hyper any more.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:58 PM on February 6, 2007
I've never lost my excitement about pixels on screens, since. Lots of other things have excited me since (particularly sex, booze, rock and roll and wandering around the world), but I still remember that moment with the kind of soft-headed avuncular nostalgia that so annoys the young.
I suppose this connects to that, somehow. Linked, if not so hyper any more.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:58 PM on February 6, 2007
Armitage! Thanks!
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:18 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:18 PM on February 6, 2007
Meh.
Triumphalism is right. Lookit, we're at the edge of a precipice here...the beginning of a cascading failure of the planet's ecosystem. How the hell can Web 2.0 deal with that?
posted by KokuRyu at 9:19 PM on February 6, 2007 [2 favorites]
Triumphalism is right. Lookit, we're at the edge of a precipice here...the beginning of a cascading failure of the planet's ecosystem. How the hell can Web 2.0 deal with that?
posted by KokuRyu at 9:19 PM on February 6, 2007 [2 favorites]
Can someone run a whether-something-is-a-word check on "rhetorics"? I'm thinking no.
This is actually kind of interesting, but I'm not entirely sure who it's for. For most people reading this, it's totally reinventing the wheel. But if I sent it to less-tech-inclined relatives, they probably wouldn't get much out of it, lacking the vocabulary.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:25 PM on February 6, 2007
This is actually kind of interesting, but I'm not entirely sure who it's for. For most people reading this, it's totally reinventing the wheel. But if I sent it to less-tech-inclined relatives, they probably wouldn't get much out of it, lacking the vocabulary.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:25 PM on February 6, 2007
There are many rhetorics: the rhetoric of modern NBA basketball analysts, the rhetoric of Freemason conspiracy theorists, the rhetoric of ABA basketball analysts. And there are lots of rhetorics within each of these rhetorics. Rhetorics abound.
posted by Aghast. at 9:38 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by Aghast. at 9:38 PM on February 6, 2007
And I thought it was just a bunch of crappy AJAX sites.
posted by muppetboy at 9:47 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by muppetboy at 9:47 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
The really terrible thing is that, as an assistant professor somewhere, taxpayers are actually paying him to spend time thinking about this nonsense.
Mike Wesh is paid by taxpayers to teach students anthropology. And he's doing some really innovative stuff in that regard. He blogged about his World Simulation Project (Part 1, Part 2) during his time as a guest blogger at Savage Minds.
It's a bit pithy to write off a person's entire contribution to society based on a four-and-a-half minute YouTube video that, for all you know, was done as a teaching aid for a lecture (or in his spare time).
posted by carmen at 9:54 PM on February 6, 2007
Mike Wesh is paid by taxpayers to teach students anthropology. And he's doing some really innovative stuff in that regard. He blogged about his World Simulation Project (Part 1, Part 2) during his time as a guest blogger at Savage Minds.
It's a bit pithy to write off a person's entire contribution to society based on a four-and-a-half minute YouTube video that, for all you know, was done as a teaching aid for a lecture (or in his spare time).
posted by carmen at 9:54 PM on February 6, 2007
Are we so chagrined and jaded to dismiss this rhetoric as, well, rhetoric? So? It's rhetoric. Perhaps even platitudinal. So? I thought it was presented in an enlightening and imaginative way, even if it didn't say anything I didn't already know. I kinda was with the guy going, "yeah. that's kinda cool isn't it? I wonder where we'll go with this crap next?" I liked how he used the web to convey his thoughts. So what if they were "been there done that" a little bit? I don't see you going there and doing that. I see (some of) you standing here with me pointing fingers at him and laughing, or (some of you) frowning or rolling your eyes or wanting those three minutes of your life back.
If I ever found myself climbing Mount Everest, I probably wouldn't make it up there cuz I'm a lazy ass with the genetic predisposition of my dad's heart and my mom's lungs, but let's say I got to the summit. I'd stand there with my arms outstretched and look around me and say to anyone there listening, "damn this is beautiful! And cold! And breathtaking! And awe-inspiring! And cold! My God can you believe we made it this far! And look how far we've come! And what good can we accomplish now? If we've done this, by God we can accomplish anything to which we set our mind! This is marvelous! Words fail me! Where's the coffee?"
And somebody on the expedition would probably elbow the guy next to him and whisper, "gee what a jerk! does he think he's the first to say any of that trite shite? Why doesn't he just shut up? I'm trying to drink my coffee without doing a spit-take."
Even mountain climbing has become passe hasn't it? People have to do Extreme Sports jumping off mountains to get a thrill out of having climbed up them.
Still. For some, just making the journey is awe-inspiring. For some, the Web still holds hope and promise and wonder. I hope to continue to be one of those people.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:09 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
If I ever found myself climbing Mount Everest, I probably wouldn't make it up there cuz I'm a lazy ass with the genetic predisposition of my dad's heart and my mom's lungs, but let's say I got to the summit. I'd stand there with my arms outstretched and look around me and say to anyone there listening, "damn this is beautiful! And cold! And breathtaking! And awe-inspiring! And cold! My God can you believe we made it this far! And look how far we've come! And what good can we accomplish now? If we've done this, by God we can accomplish anything to which we set our mind! This is marvelous! Words fail me! Where's the coffee?"
And somebody on the expedition would probably elbow the guy next to him and whisper, "gee what a jerk! does he think he's the first to say any of that trite shite? Why doesn't he just shut up? I'm trying to drink my coffee without doing a spit-take."
Even mountain climbing has become passe hasn't it? People have to do Extreme Sports jumping off mountains to get a thrill out of having climbed up them.
Still. For some, just making the journey is awe-inspiring. For some, the Web still holds hope and promise and wonder. I hope to continue to be one of those people.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:09 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
Web 2.0? Barbaric! You haven't lived until you've felt the powdery feel of chalk dust between your fingers, while you scrawl deliciously across the silken surface of a writing slate! And even then, true textists do it the real way - with a hammer, chisel, and sexy piece of granite. Why I'm using this lowlife keyboardmajig, I don't know.
posted by Xere at 10:41 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by Xere at 10:41 PM on February 6, 2007
Well, despite all the naysaying, I thought it was pretty neat. Yeah, it's not full of groundbreaking ideas for those of us living in the middle of it, but this guy is an anthropology teacher. This stuff probably hasn't occurred to most of his students, and it was very well-presented.
Learned men, it has been said, are not the fountainheads of knowledge, but rather the cisterns. Mr. Welch is doing a fine job of spreading these ideas.
KokuRyu says: Triumphalism is right. Lookit, we're at the edge of a precipice here...the beginning of a cascading failure of the planet's ecosystem. How the hell can Web 2.0 deal with that?
For one thing, it lets you, up in British Columbia, talk to me, down in the Southern US, freely and easily. You can reach someone in Russia just as quickly. We're used to thinking in terms of old organizations, but we're gaining the ability to organize ourselves extra-governmentally, across many existing boundaries.... we can't reach everyone this way yet, but surely all the interconnectedness, by letting ideas spread faster and more thoroughly, will help us push our respective governments to act faster than they otherwise would have. It appears that MetaFilter itself has caused the spread of some ideas into the mainstream media.
Maybe, someday, webroots organizations will be able to take on the kinds of projects that have always been associated with formal government.
And yes, I realize that's not a terribly new idea either, but I still think it may be true.
posted by Malor at 11:02 PM on February 6, 2007
Learned men, it has been said, are not the fountainheads of knowledge, but rather the cisterns. Mr. Welch is doing a fine job of spreading these ideas.
KokuRyu says: Triumphalism is right. Lookit, we're at the edge of a precipice here...the beginning of a cascading failure of the planet's ecosystem. How the hell can Web 2.0 deal with that?
For one thing, it lets you, up in British Columbia, talk to me, down in the Southern US, freely and easily. You can reach someone in Russia just as quickly. We're used to thinking in terms of old organizations, but we're gaining the ability to organize ourselves extra-governmentally, across many existing boundaries.... we can't reach everyone this way yet, but surely all the interconnectedness, by letting ideas spread faster and more thoroughly, will help us push our respective governments to act faster than they otherwise would have. It appears that MetaFilter itself has caused the spread of some ideas into the mainstream media.
Maybe, someday, webroots organizations will be able to take on the kinds of projects that have always been associated with formal government.
And yes, I realize that's not a terribly new idea either, but I still think it may be true.
posted by Malor at 11:02 PM on February 6, 2007
Xere: because by the time you chiseled your comment and and shipped it to Matt for transcription, the thread would be closed. :)
posted by Malor at 11:03 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by Malor at 11:03 PM on February 6, 2007
The internet looks great. Can't wait to try it out.
posted by notmydesk at 11:05 PM on February 6, 2007
posted by notmydesk at 11:05 PM on February 6, 2007
Ha. If this was really Web 2.0, they would have implemented that video in the browser using Ajax and a LAMP backend.
But it would have only worked on one obsolete version of Firefox with an obscure plugin that crashes the browser every few minutes.
And because anyone could modify it, eventually it word turn into a edit war between various factions who believe that web2.0 is this and not that, and also a 14yr old who inserts subliminal images of penises.
And it would still be raved about on Digg.
posted by nielm at 11:49 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
But it would have only worked on one obsolete version of Firefox with an obscure plugin that crashes the browser every few minutes.
And because anyone could modify it, eventually it word turn into a edit war between various factions who believe that web2.0 is this and not that, and also a 14yr old who inserts subliminal images of penises.
And it would still be raved about on Digg.
posted by nielm at 11:49 PM on February 6, 2007 [1 favorite]
I thought the production was pretty slick, liked the ides of typing out the message inside HTML docs and webapps and forms was pretty cool.
posted by cell divide at 12:55 AM on February 7, 2007
posted by cell divide at 12:55 AM on February 7, 2007
Well I thought it was pretty inspiring. Yeah, nothing new, but pretty slick. Maybe the groovy techno trance background music got to me. The fact that people have been saying the Net is gonna change the world since the 90's doesn't make it any less true. No it doesn't make our cars fly, but we do have information at our fingertips in a way that's changed our lives.
posted by Loudmax at 2:44 AM on February 7, 2007
posted by Loudmax at 2:44 AM on February 7, 2007
Welcome to Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
You can do anything at Web 2.0.
Anything at all.
The only limit is yourself.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0, welcome.
Yes, this is Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0, and welcome to you who have come to Web 2.0.
Anything is possible at Web 2.0.
You can do anything Web 2.0.
The infinite is possible at Web 2.0.
The unattainable is unknown at Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
Welcome.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
posted by goetter at 3:09 AM on February 7, 2007 [1 favorite]
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
You can do anything at Web 2.0.
Anything at all.
The only limit is yourself.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0, welcome.
Yes, this is Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0, and welcome to you who have come to Web 2.0.
Anything is possible at Web 2.0.
You can do anything Web 2.0.
The infinite is possible at Web 2.0.
The unattainable is unknown at Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
Welcome.
This is Web 2.0.
Welcome to Web 2.0.
posted by goetter at 3:09 AM on February 7, 2007 [1 favorite]
For one thing, it lets you, up in British Columbia, talk to me, down in the Southern US, freely and easily.
You mean like...a telephone would?
Actually, I figured out this afternoon the definition of "Web2.0" - it's the precise point at which people stopped developing websites to be compatible with Netscape 4. That's it. "Oh, fellas, we're allowed to use fancy CSS and Javascript now, let's cut loose on the code!"
posted by Jimbob at 4:54 AM on February 7, 2007
You mean like...a telephone would?
Actually, I figured out this afternoon the definition of "Web2.0" - it's the precise point at which people stopped developing websites to be compatible with Netscape 4. That's it. "Oh, fellas, we're allowed to use fancy CSS and Javascript now, let's cut loose on the code!"
posted by Jimbob at 4:54 AM on February 7, 2007
I dug it. You're all a bunch of douchebags.
posted by ghastlyfop at 5:32 AM on February 7, 2007
posted by ghastlyfop at 5:32 AM on February 7, 2007
Liked it too.
posted by MarshallPoe at 5:46 AM on February 7, 2007
posted by MarshallPoe at 5:46 AM on February 7, 2007
I do like that the "mashup" mentioned (flickr maps) is based entirely on Flickr/Yahoo technologies, and is not a mashup at all.
posted by cillit bang at 6:10 AM on February 7, 2007
posted by cillit bang at 6:10 AM on February 7, 2007
Speaking as a jaded elitist asshole, there are a lot of jaded elitist assholes here.
posted by everichon at 6:38 AM on February 7, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by everichon at 6:38 AM on February 7, 2007 [1 favorite]
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posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:21 PM on February 6, 2007