And I’m wondering right now how ubiquity of the web browser has affected ourselves, and I think having simultaneously but, mutually exclusive tabs, as like a major conceptual model, for interacting with the information super highway I think this might’ve affected our attention spans.
our minds are sort of being shaped to just flip between different tabs of thought essentially as well
Doom-scrolling and time wasting are aftershocks of a consumer driven technology.
That's one reason I built BrowserBox because I saw it as a way to deliver 'creation focused' activities in the Browser, and extend the experience from consumption to more. All i wanted to do at first was use it as a layer to deliver web scraping script building with a nice UI, without having to go through a walled garden of Chrome extension or download another application.
Its potential is much more tho.
It is now, but it wasn't in Sir Tim's 1990 implementation.
I disagree. There are so many creative tools that are now online that you can access from your browser that were not envisioned in the original web. It is obviously true that not EVERY website is about creation (but to expect that seems unreasonable?), but even Wikipedia is a collaborative project.
Examples include products from big vendors like Adobe's Photoshop, to smaller products like SketchUp, to more indy generative art tools like https://processing.org and Strudel (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39924210).
There’s not a lot of freedom to express in the often narrow structures of: tweets, posts, shorts, and the algorithm.
Wikipedia is a different beast and interesting because it’s restrictions are by convention, policy, and a kind of social algorithm formed somewhat adhocraticly, overtime, but no less restrictive of the types and modes of expression they ultimately permit, Then the more purely algorithmic databases.
Well, that's self-evident. You also cannot express yourself musically in a drawing app or make a movie on a piano.
It does not make sense to expect every website to have the mechanisms to express yourself in any which way you want - that would be a gargantuan, infinite undertaking to enable that and result in an unapproachable user interface (if it is even possible).
Different tools for different use cases.
But that's the point: most people don't realize they are being funneled into this limited expression. They don't have access to the web-equivalent of a piano or a movie making tool, to let them author web content, hypermedia, as a first class citizen.
Not just limited tweets, posts, etc. It could be so much richer, and yet it's not. Don't you think that's strange, and strange that everybody adopts it?
Those tools, FB, Twitter, etc -- it's just not a creative free expression. But it could be!
It probably sounded like I was dissing the very creative tools you listed. I wasn't! Not at all. I'm a big fan of processing, check it out, these are my sketches from 13 years ago, even back to the days of Java: https://openprocessing.org/user/15252 -- and here's some videos of some of them: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCrisfolio
The point is not that there are no tools for creativity, it's that the biggest tools for expression for most people are not that creative. They restrict the authoring of hypermedia as a first class citizen. Self-evident limitations, right? Like you say. But what's not obvious to most people is how limited those companies actually make them, and yet how much that could be opened up.
So we get the bland commons. We think we're being so creative -- we are in a way -- but we're also not. Is that just people or is it a lack of tech? You know what I'm saying? Or you don't really get it?
I think it might be different in future as the ways of interacting get richer. At least I hope so!
Sometimes I think it's such a shame that mainstream "content creators" are limited to:
- 140 characters
- FB posts
- YT shorts
People feel they have such huge creative outlets, and in a way they do! But in another way those messages/mediums are quite limited. Hopefully the ability to create rich experiences becomes more evenly distributed in future.
But maybe tech is only part of the reason it's not. Perhaps it really is like the 90-9-1 rule. 90% just consume, 9% comment, 1% create? Is this a true universal law governing humanity, or just want the "social media" (people are products) companies want to gaslight us into believing about our limited potential, because it makes us better products???
Hahah! :)
The problem isn’t the human nature, it’s the ease of accessibility to the quick superficial info. You can feel like an expert for a few minutes, then forget a topic and never use it.
Before computing existed, boredom was a driver for creative pursuits. Now boredom is an anxiety sink because we lose the urge to “play” creatively. The issues start with children and continue into adulthood. Boredom is good, it squeezes new ideas out with pressure. As it stands now, the pressure is constantly pushing ideas back in, no internal thought stands a chance.
There are mathematicians opposed to hearing new theories before they contemplate them personally, so as not to be influenced. It’s easy to think in terms of some else’s structure, and I believe that society is moving there on the whole.
These internet behemoths love the profits the eyeballs bring, but long term I envision a far less creative populace.
Thanks for the work on BrowserBox, I’m going to give it a run.