Re: <nettime> the resurrection of the edge

[Geoffrey Goodell <goodell@oxonia.net>]

Thanks Morlock

For those of us who cannot reach the site because of filters put in place by
cryptome.org itself or its overzealous carrier Defense.Net, Inc, you can also
reach elbar.pdf here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190205195243/https://cryptome.org/2019/02/elbar.pdf

Best wishes --

Geoff

On Fri, Mar 01, 2019 at 12:23:25AM -0800, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> Some 10-15 years ago the edge devices gave up, and became robotic extensions
> of the center. As Interwebs deteriorated* into 'web' and 'apps', the agency
> of the edge devices all but disappeared. The organization behind the last
> non-corporate browser took money from corporations, and that was the end of
> it. The "Open source" become a lipstick on the pig, as pretty much all
> involved succumbed to the ideology of centralization (more on that at
> https://cryptome.org/2019/02/elbar.pdf .)
> 
> [* to illustrate to non-tech outsiders the sad state of computing machinery:
> take one page from your favorite book on philosophy; now imagine that all
> philosophy books can only be written by using only words from that page.
> Except that it's worse than that.]
> 
> But there are signs of life! Gab.ai created a piece of software that runs on
> *your* computer and overlays 3rd party web pages with Gab user comments. 3rd
> party sites can't do shit about it. The decades old concept that content can
> be locally modified prior viewing is back (I still remember an extension I
> used for years, that replaced each occurrence of select words on any site I
> visited with some other words. It sounds simplistic, but it did make a huge
> difference and made me realize how words hit you at levels below perception
> ... s/government//mafia/ etc.)
> 
> Why this didn't happen earlier? One part was fear of lawsuits. But the main
> reason was widespread collusion that the sanctity of the centralized model
> is not to be challenged. Now the first step was made, and it will be
> interesting to watch how it develops. It threatens the whole industry -
> after all that money spent on web and apps, some jerk can deface it with
> impunity. But more importantly, it reveals the elephant in the room - end
> user devices are actually computers!
> 
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