A Maturing Web?

It makes me feel a bit sad reading posts like this from Dan Catt and this one from Aaron Cope (that Dan links to), and on some level a shame that they have to be written at all. However, I’m also thankful that they are writing these posts. And that they are exploring better ways forward that don’t place our faith in external silos of content.

I never really got into Flickr - there was much I liked about it, but entrusting all my photos to some other hosting system was too great a barrier for me to use it properly. Not that I built anything useful for myself to use in its place, that’s still an annoying when-I-get-round-to-it task.

Had I known more about the philosophy and approach of Aaron and Dan in the early days of Flickr, I think I’d have been a happy adopter. Particularly if I’d known about Parallel Flickr.

The optimist in me hopes we can learn from these experiences and build better, less brittle systems in the future. The Indieweb movement seems to be a move in this direction too.

Here’s hoping.