When we say something is on the web what does that mean?
Here is my take. I should probably preface that with a disclaimer. You would get a very different, and more representative answer if you were to ask my daughter, or really anyone who doesn’t work with opensource and doesn’t have strong ideals around the open web. 🙂
For a lot of people, I think the lines between the internet and the web have blurred. Or maybe it was never clearly defined in the first place? We say things like “I saw it on the web” when we really mean “I saw it online,” whether that was on an app, in a newsletter, or on TikTok.
The Internet means so much today. The Internet is IoT, the smart devices in our homes. Internet is the social media apps we use to exchange messages and pictures. Internet is the apps we use to order pizza, check the weather. Internet is the endless stream of videos we scroll through for a small dopamine hit.
For me, “the web” is none of that. It has a specific meaning. When I think about “the web”, I think about something that lives at a URL I can open in a browser. Something that’s linkable, shareable, aed readable from anywhere, without having to install an app, or be logged in.
I know this sounds like an old man’s view. I don’t see my view as nostalgia though. I see it as a way of thinking about information and content that’s open, interconnected, and (hopefully) durable (Cool URIs don’t change). When I say “on the web,” I’m picturing that open space of websites, blogs, wikis. I see the web as an opposition of the ever-growing walled gardens of the Internet.
I’ve written all this before looking at any of the replies Dave got so far. I’ll now go and check!
