do you guys think an alternative to the web would be a cool idea?

like an entire redesign of the protocols, languages, security, etc

there already is a form of that.
cant remember the damn name. was it lib://?

Isn't Usenet still somewhat alive?

Yes!

@chromdioxyde Oh, how I loved the Usenet. But as the web forums growed, the Usenet servers died.

My ISP at that time fortunately kept his server for a long time and had a really qualified Usenet admin, but at some point it was over.

From time to time I think about giving it another try, there are some servers left, but I didn't make it for the last years.

Not gonna happen for a loooooong time, but my prediction has remained the same for a while:

1. Websites and web apps become rare
2. APIs and native apps / plugins rule the roost
3. Smart digital assistants powered by machine learning and developer input work across service-boundaries to get shit done (“buy those tickets to Spain when the weather looks like it’s going to be good”).

The web will become a simple comms medium once again.

We’ll probably see some new protocols emerge around IoT and service to service communication, as I can’t see people putting up with REST much longer, especially in a world of directed comms and connection.

My guess? One of the corporate giants or OSS groups will win out, and we’ll end up with homogeny rather than multiple approaches.

OSS and variation is great for competition and growth, but eventually we’ll have to hit critical mass and move toward a singular system.

I really want to see the new decentralised internet happen as described by Richard in Silicon Valley.

Someone is watching silicon valley !!

@BryanOfEarth I’m sure many people had that idea, myself included 😛

No, it would be a bad idea because there is no reason to assume that "from scratch" would be any better. It would just generate a huge amount of effort for basically nothing.

@BryanOfEarth I thought about implementing something similar, but the issues I kept bumping against were these:

1. You don’t own the data once it leaves for the app’s servers, they can duplicate it and you’d never know
2. The costs associated with storage and bandwidth are now the user’s
burden
3. High-volume apps are going to absolutely hammer a data store
4. Apps will experience inconsistent performance across users and the hardware their data is hosted on

If anything, I think this approach is just going to cement online inequality and I simply don’t see any major players going for it... dead on arrival is my assessment 🤷‍♂️