Re: Changing the Social Contract of the Web

On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 at 15:55, Jo Rabin wrote:

> Catching up belatedly on this interesting thread …
>  
> … I'm just not clear what Social Contract is being broken?  
>  
> Not long ago a PC was a device that you used to do Web browsing. In some sense the notion of PC and browsing were intertwined.
Absolutely.   
>  
> Having observed that use of the Web doesn't require a PC, if we're now transitioning to an understanding that use of the Web doesn't require a browser, does that matter?
>  

Maybe.... Grab a copy of Firefox Aurora and try installing some of the early apps from the Mozilla marketplace. Disclaimer: these are very early apps/experiments and I'm not criticising them - just observing from having had a quick play with them. Those will be installed as actual apps (i.e., on a Mac, they are installed in the applications folder - exactly like Opera used to do with widgets)… but when you fire them up, a lot "feel" and behave like web apps (e.g., they overflow off the bottom of the window... some even pop up new windows that can't be navigated, etc.).  

However, in other places, you wouldn't even know you are using a Web app at all… like many things built with PhoneGap that I've used (e.g., gather.at (http://gather.at)). So, the "web app" feel is not something inherent in the Web platform how people design apps - a Web app can be coerced to feeling like a native app with some work (or maybe little work, depending how skilled you are).   
>  
> Am I completely missing the point?
>  

I don't know if there is a point :) Maybe just a lose collection of thoughts and experiences. Or maybe I'm missing the point too … what is a social contract, anyway? :)  

When I start thinking about these things, I often find myself reflecting on a post by Joe Hewitt [1]:

[[
There is, however, one other characteristic that does define the Web, and that is the humble hyperlink. Links are a feature of HTML, but they are not limited to HTML. Links are the connections that give the Web its name, and links are the biggest thing missing from native platforms. Some have pointed out to me that iOS and Android allow you to construct URLs that let users navigate between apps, but what they are navigating is not a network, but the tiny subset of the App Store they have installed on their devices. That is a far less powerful idea than the Web, where a single click is guaranteed (network willing) to take you to a self-contained application that begins running immediately.

So, my definition of the Web then is resources loaded over the Internet using HTTP and then displayed in a hyperlink-capable client. This definition is liberating. It helps me see a future beyond HTML which is still the Web. I can say now that when I exclaim my love for the Web, it's the freedom of driving the open Internet in a browser that I love, not the rendering technology. Hyperlink traversal matters. The Internet being global and decentralized matters. HTML does not matter.

The biggest thing HTML has going for it is that every computer in the world can render it. Not a small benefit, to be sure, but not a reason to limit ourselves to HTML forever. People can and will download new browsers with new rendering engines, given the proper motivation. It just so happens that we're currently in a major transition period, from desktops to mobile touch screen devices, where there is an incentive for people to try new browsers. I wonder, will someone capitalize on that?
]]

[1] http://joehewitt.com/2011/09/26/what-the-web-is-and-is-not

--  
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Wednesday, 13 March 2013 19:05:06 UTC