Sunny Walker's Blog

I agree entirely with your analysis of our once fine web. Many elitists would argue that it is the general public that lends "crassness" to everything it touches, and that people are generally stupid. I disagree. The web is not, nor should it be an elitist infrastructure. Whilst some may point to the plethora of personal home pages and blogs that litter the internet and which contain nothing but worthless drivel, I disagree with this too. Certainly there is considerable drivel and pointless information to be found (my own site included), but to the friends and families that frequent these little windows into a person's life, these home sites are interesting, informative and humorous - in short useful. Who are we to decree what information belongs on the internet?

Actually we should make such decrees when it comes to the real reason that the internet has broken down - commercialism. Corporater mindlessness is the problem. Someone's mindless blog or home site harms no one who doesn't choose to visit it. Similarly, corporate sites would cause no harm if they sat there awaiting our decision to visit them, but no. No, companies want to drag us down into the same cesspool that overran television and print media - a constant stream of banner ads, skyscraper ads, popup ads, click-through ads and whatever comes next.

Could it be that this is the cost of a free internet? Should we simply consider these corporations the sponsors of our free information resource? "We shall return to the information you seek after a word from our sponsors..." ?

I think part of the problem stems from the non enforcement of the domain name structure. How is it that I own a .net domain yet I am not a network provider? How do my friends own .com's for their home sites? And what about the .tv, .home, .whatever next? It seems the only rigourously enforced domains are .edu, .gov and .mil.

What if adverts were not allowed on anything other than a .com domain? What if there was a domain similar to .edu that indicated the presence of research/meaningful information (by whose definition?), that ensured quality information, commerce free, but did not require one to become an educational establishment? What if news channels were moved to a .news domain to seperate them from ads impersonating articles/news?

There are deeper issues than this, for sure, but it would be a start?

You're certainly correct in saying that it's not the "general public" as an entity that is the poison itself. It is the extra baggage that it brings. Millions of different opinions of good, moral, and/or proper business behaviors the come with the general public, without any checks and balances, was the recipe for disaster.

Had specific rules, laws, or guidelines been put in place from the outset and had they been enforced upon John Q. Public, we might still be able to fondly gaze upon the Internet as a valuable resource rather than a bane to productivity and privacy.

Such rules would mean that I would have a .info domain rather than a .com. I chose a .com domain based on the reaction that people have when you tell them a web site address. When people think of web sites, most immediately assume .com. However, had domain suffixes been enforced (somehow), this knee-jerk reaction may not have been as prevalent.

Sadly, I think it's too late to save our dear friend, the Internet from the woes that plague it. No amount of legislation will solve the problems of malware (spam, spim, virii, popups, hidden EULAs, xss, etc.) and will generally just provide legal loopholes for such. Top that off with the prosecutorial problems of international law variations and we're in an untraversable quagmire--much like what email has become already.

But, as much as I bemoan the state of the 'net, I dare not think of the alternative (going without).

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: