The Web 1.1 Manifesto

Published: 2023.11.23

Blog Entry: 1

The Web is Ugly & Broken

The browsable web in 2023 is ugly & broken. I believe most people know this even if they don't think about it. It's truly a horrible experience when you have to use a browser and search engine to access information. Riddled with pay-walls, popups, accept cookie banners, ads and bloated sites. This becomes even worse when trying to access it from a phone.

None of these concepts are truly abhorrent by themselves - but having to fight them all at once for the majority of the web is a shit show.

Mobile Apps and huge social media sites solve some of these issues by hiding these annoyances behind user account sign ups, integrated ads and sleek mobile application frameworks - but they come at a price. This isn't a complete list of issues but some of the disadvantages include:

  • Platform Lock-In
  • Centralized Control
  • Less Portable Data
  • Dead Data
  • User Data Collection Abuse

It also changes the way the users search, create and interact with information but that's a topic worth exploring more deeply another time. I'm sure there has been a lot written about this which I'd like to find and review some point soon.

ChatGPT & Generative AI

ChatGPT was maybe the biggest shift in this dynamic since Web 2.0 started taking off. I think this is why it got the huge surge it did so quickly. The user interface was just a text chat box. It had none of issues I mentioned above and the information (text) appeared straight away in front of you. OpenAI carried this to their app when they released that too.

I think the user interface experience has been largely overlooked so far as to what helped ChatGPT blow up and what helped it be adopted so quickly. It's easy to understand how this was overlooked as most of the conversation was (rightfully) around the transformative nature of AI.

Perhaps this is why Bing Chat & Google Bard have not taken off in the same way yet. They feel like they're trying to bring the modern web into the chatbox along with all of the issues I mentioned before associated with it.

I've started paying for ChatGPT Plus so I can get information that should be readily available on the open web. Simple stuff like cooking recipes, basic how-tos and other information lookup type information that didn't and shouldn't require generative AI responses.

To me it's worth the money and it's further highlighted just how broken the searchable web is when this experience is just so much more enjoyable.

I think this observation is fairly self evident - as conversation around the potential death of tractional search engines started happening very quickly after the public release of ChatGPT

Next Steps

It's impossible to know how this will play out, but perhaps the searchable web will become obsolete as AI takes over more and more tasks. If this happens let's hope it doesn't carry over the same horrible user experience trends that the modern web did - or create their own unique bloat and anti-user experiences.

If AI assistants where to take over search engines and websites it raises a few questions. What will user generated content look like? How will content & information be monetized? Are we going to further consolidate into a few large social networks and platforms?

I'm hoping there still exists a place for user generated content outside of these platforms. Maybe they'll look more like self hosted API endpoints that any AI can pull information from. The experience of building searchable content online will be less about making it look pretty in a browser. Less website building and more data constructing and writing.

The Experiment

This blog/website is an experiment in creating that kind of content on the web in the purest form I can think of.

It will be accessible via browsers and readable for humans, but will not contain the bloat associated with most modern websites.

My hope is that it also encourages me to work on my writing without worrying about tools or services too much.

This is Web 1.0 slightly updated. Let's call it Web 1.1

You can read my specific self-imposed rules for it here - and specific technical specifications here.