Post

Danny Engelman 🌷🏍️🛥️
@engelman.nl

Not worried My parents taught typing. The industry feared computers. They bought computers Some have vision. Most don’t A disk virus hit our PCs in 1990 We still connected to the Internet that year AI is fire We didn’t stop using fire. We learned to control it—and still haven’t mastered it

Patrick Brosset
@patrickbrosset.com

I understand the point of view and I share it to some degree as well. But the point isn’t about whether to worry about AI in general. This is more focused on the web as we know it today, and seeing it go down the drain.

Danny Engelman 🌷🏍️🛥️
@engelman.nl

It’s not going down the drain. It’s being condensed Stack Overflow usage dropped to almost zero Yet ask a Web Components or topic X question, and you GET an answer. It still works fine The Web was similar mid 90s: suddenly every [beep] was making lousy webpages. Until we learned to create pages

Philip Jägenstedt
@foolip.org

I'm worried too! I think the platform itself is also at risk of being disintermediated. If user experiences are being generated with UI toolkits that have the web as one of several compile targets, then a slow migration to a new underlying platform becomes possible.

Andreas Møller
@andreasmoller.dk

Same. I don't think anyone actually thinks this is ideal. I think it is two things: 1. AI is new and facinating. (first time you discovered sriracha, you put it on everything) 2. We spent the last 15 years making the internet shit to please google and some algorithms. Both can be fixed.

Andrea Lazzarotto
@lazza.bsky.social

1. …and it produces real value, specifically if used with a grain of salt and human review on everything it does. 2. Exactly, this is the main issue. Once you could search for stuff and get an answer from a couple of links. Now it is all about paywalls, forced tracking and cookies, ads, etc.

Geoff Graham
@geoffgraham.me

Yeah I'm a good deal worried, too, Patrick. But probably more sad and disappointed more than anything else. And I think it goes beyond "get off my lawn" level. The thing we've loved and nurtured since we were kids is hanging on a pendulum that's swung so far to the right.

Ri
@riyana.dev

agreed i think niche internet spaces and cultures might be able to survive yet, for people who enjoy getting into the nitty gritty and talking to real people but with regards to browser technology innovation, i feel less optimistic

Vale
@vale.rocks

To respond to your closing question: I'm worried as shit, Patrick. Things are dire and only becoming more so by the day.

Mile SEO
@mile-seo.bsky.social

Great piece! It's definitely not the web that we've got to learn so much about in early 2000's. However, I do think that it's the road we've been travelling towards with search engines anyway. It's just even more streamlined now. Is that good? That's another question.