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The reason contemporary web programming has gotten so fiendishly complex is because the whole project is trying to turn the web into something it wasn't designed to be: an app platform.The web was designed around documents, not apps.
To web developers this is progress. We added features and built frameworks and transpilers to make it happen. And now, with WebAssembly, the goal is in sight: the browser becomes a dumb rectangle that hosts our apps, written however we want to write them, running everywhere.
The web wasn't the first app platform and it's not the only one today. Though its ubiquity certainly makes it very convenient. But it was the only document platform. And most of the unique value it contributed to society stemmed from it being a document platform.
So what's a "document platform"? A document platform:
- is organized around individual pieces of content
- that have stable addresses by which they can be referenced
- empowers 3rd parties to organize content by collecting addresses
- and gives readers control of presentation
- is organized around individual pieces of content
- that have stable addresses by which they can be referenced
- empowers 3rd parties to organize content by collecting addresses
- and gives readers control of presentation
Like all technical architecture this had social consequences. The signature sites of the Document Platform Era – Blogs, Wikipedia, Flickr, etc – emphasized permanence, ownership, responsibility, and collaboration.
App Era sites are all Eyeball Farms. App Era sites aren't oriented around the artifacts and collections their users create but by the attention they can aggregate. They emphasize speed, novelty, and reach.
Document Platform Era sites were funded in a wide variety of ways. Flickr was subscription driven, Wikipedia was a non-profit, the most successful blogs were advertising supported, but many were labors of love. Google, the great address collector, was ad supported of course.
The big App Era sites are all advertising funded. In fact advertising tech drove a lot of the changes to web standards and additions to browser capabilities. And by "advertising tech" I mean user surveillance and involuntary multi-media. Cross-site tracking techniques and pop-ups
The transition to the App Era also took the cap off of centralization of power on the web. In the Document Era information lived where it was easiest to create or under the auspices of whoever created it. In the App Era if it doesn't live in the App it might as well not exist.
So many of the civic ills that afflict the web today are either caused by or exacerbated by this transition from Document Platform to App Platform:
- disinformation
- winner-takes-all centralization
- coordinated harassment
- addiction-based engagement models
- disinformation
- winner-takes-all centralization
- coordinated harassment
- addiction-based engagement models
One of the big questions now: is this transition from Documents to Apps a ratchet? Or is it a pendulum? Is this a media trend that can reverse or is it more like Enclosure – a one time historical transition from a Commons to Feudalism?
To end back where I started, as technologists is this what we want? I know these new tools make it easier to deliver software to users. And that's our job. But that's not our whole job. Our job is also to build the technological platform for the world we want to live in.
