"We Need to Rewild the Internet" and other small web recommended reading

[matsushima]

If you were born around the 1970s, you probably remember many more dead insects on the windscreen of your parents’ car than on your own. Global land-dwelling insect populations are dropping about 9% a decade. If you’re a geek, you probably programmed your own computer to make basic games. You certainly remember a web with more to read than the same five websites. You may have even written your own blog.

But many people born after 2000 probably think a world with few insects, little ambient noise from birdcalls, where you regularly use only a few social media and messaging apps (rather than a whole web) is normal.
We Need to Rewild the Internet by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon

I've been slowly working my way through this article during my lunch breaks at work this week.

I thought of the smallweb community and wondered what other books, articles, etc. you would recommend as a sort of "small web syllabus." (I have tech, digital literacy and social media tags in my bookmarks that others might find interesting to peruse, although the media diary is mostly for my own recordkeeping and, thus, incomplete.)

Comments

[alaterdate]

Small Web is kind of broad so these may not fit exactly what you were thinking, but I'll link some of my bookmarks.

Making the Web Fun Again
"The purpose of this project is not to inspire nostalgia. It’s to rebuild the platform for us to be able to be creative again. To have sites that we can do whatever we want with. This is not nostalgia speaking. We really did lose our platforms for creativity and rich self expression online, and I want to help bring them back."

Into the Personal-Website-Verse
"The personal website. It’s a place to write, create, and share whatever you like, without the need to ask for anyone’s permission. It is also the perfect place to explore and try new things"
Has a nice list of things one can do to connect more with other people who have personal sites.

Click Around and Find Out
"If you care about the indie web growing, by all means write, by all means create, by all means curate. But most of all, just read. Or listen, or experience. Spend an afternoon clicking around, like everybody used to. The more people who do that, the more everything else will slot into place without even having to think much about it. If 2024 truly is a tipping point into a new world, then it can’t happen in a vacuum."

The Internet Used to be Fun
'a collection of articles that to some degree answer the question “Why have a personal website?”'
Lots of good links in here!

How to Write About Blogs
"On the topic of blogging and personal publishing, I found so many interesting articles and nuggets of wisdom the last couple of months through RSS feeds, Mastodon and micro.blog."
More links!

E/N
"E/N description: The website's author covers a myriad of topics. It's not narrowly focused. The author writes about everything or at least everything that's important to the author. The site might contain something useful for anyone who visits. The content means everything to the publisher, but it could mean nothing to the rest of the world. "
This last one is just a little something about a type of site referred to as Everything/Nothing and helped me get over the sour taste of all those neocities manifestos that say something like 99% of people on there shouldn't have a website because they're "boring people" that I had the misfortune to stumble upon.

Though I don't agree with absolutely everything he says, I've also found two of Jaron Lanier's books interesting: You Are Not a Gadget and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. In the former he discusses how the structure of the web and software holds us back from creativity and pigeon holes people into set behaviors and the latter is a bit more of the same, but with more emphasis on social media addiction.

[matsushima]

… neocities manifestos that say something like 99% of people on there shouldn't have a website because they're "boring people[.]"
YIKES! I do feel weird about how, for my students, the internet (or social media) is an extension of their school social life, and not an escape separate from it, but "most people shouldn't have a web presence" isn't the answer to that problem!