Web is Dead: introducing the temporal web
mirror.xyz
mirror.xyz
- different sites having different UIs (so?)
- Companies use tools like Intercom chatbots because they don't have the resources to develop them in house (again, so? don't reinvent the wheel)
The case study presented is a crypto wallet, because of course it is. I have yet to see an article from a person with ".eth" in their handle that isn't shilling NFTs, Web3 or something else that's pretty much only for the Ethereum crowd.
The thing about Web 1.0 was that it sold itself. The first time you saw it in action at a friend's house or in a college computer lab, chances are you immediately recognized its value. Whether it was exploring X-files fansites, Shockwave games, or even the original CERN site with its then-novel hyperlinked structure. It was Minitel in full color, with audio and video support (RealPlayer "buffering...." messages aside)
Web3 OTOH doesn't seem to be much besides gauche e-trinkets and dApps that are mostly crypto/NFT stores. Is there a killer app or use case that isn't already served by the actual open web?
Flash forward years and years and so far I just have not sensed the same magic and awe with things like blockchain “stuff” but it may be that I’m not allowing myself to be mentally agile and open (I’m willing to admit it’s a possibility, at least).
Web3 isn't an easy concept to understand because it has 'web' in the name, yet it can't be accessed via the clearweb, only via browser extensions, or mirror sites.
The NFT site "hicetnunc" went down recently, with little to no explanation and people on Twitter recommended going to one of several of its mirrors, all with a different address. Would a regular user go to "amazon.win" if "amazon.com" was down?
There's so much about Web3 that feels shady or prone to malfunctioning at any time, with no communication. I hope you can understand that that aspect of it simply does not reconcile with the 'monetize-first' attitude of its proponents.
> web4ᵗʰ aka "the temporal web": user interactions across screen space and time of an immutable conversation
> What do we have?
> * The temporal web with conversation-first interfaces, leveraging decentralized communication protocols.
> * Forcing developers to really think at the isolated-component level, while reducing the surface of worry (remember mobile-first, constraints are a blessing).
> * Making their life simpler (even though they don't want it because… money, you know)
> * And most importantly making users' lives simpler: catering better for their intents and adding outstanding build-in support
That's a lot of bullshit bingo points...
Is it basically a chatbot as a UI?
To misuse his term, I thought "temporal web" was the recognition that the internet you're looking at now is different from yesterday's, because content get added, deleted and changed all the time. A web where you can rewind to "Version from $DATE" would be interesting...
But me clicking a button to see the details of my booking and getting transferred to a chat interface where my click was translated to a question with a "processing" progress bar irritated me to no end. And it replies with just a partial info inside a tiny chat bubble instead of having all the info in full screen! Just give me the freaking page with my booking details, godfuckingdamnit!
but as i was trying to explain, they missed the point and just created frustration for users
didn't want my article to sound like bullshit, that's why i built a poc to try and explain that it's not about having chatbots, but having entire components in a chronological order of the interactions with a website
in your case the booking details would be easily accessible just by scrolling up for instance
Obviously docs we use every day are doc centric. Although the holy grail of easily embedding and linking docs has not been achieved.
Games and other "session" type interaction should simply be docs. You create a new game session, you could have several. You pick up each session by opening it. You can back up sessions yourself if the app doesn't let you, or you just prefer to do so. You are in "control" of you own data, i.e. game state. (Identity management can allow transferred/leg-up games to be easily differentiated from true one person game accomplishment.)
Accounts are just docs. A doc shared by two owners with data and state that gets appended as it is used. Much easier to have two accounts with your financial exchange or bank, or anyone else if you like, without special custom support for that kind of thing.
Apps, web or native, take a back seat. They can be auto dowloaded as needed. App folders become just caches as docs know what apps or app classes they need.
Most doc creation is simply a duplication of a template with no parameters, or perhaps a simple configuration of creator/viewer/owner/capability parameters. (i.e. an energy utility account.)
Because everything is a doc, users can organize them, back them up, etc. Own their own data.
A lot more thought could go into this. But there is no reason why the code behind different doc types would matter much - native, web, etc. once the limitations of those platforms for this simpler model were ironed out. Why should the user ever have to care or be aware of platform choices?
thanks for sharing!
Basically, a notepad that grandma and tech intelligencia can interop on is unbelievably powerful.