alt Hacker NewsThe current web supports flat information delivery, and it's there if you want it. Wikipedia can be presented in pure text. If you write a story or an essay you can post it in many places, including your own web site.
Perhaps what's needed is for an alternative search engine. Assert that you will only index a site that meets some strict set of limits. If that's what people want they will use that engine. If it's popular sites will have have to find ways to get listed, e.g. "simple.amazon.com" which supports that standard.
Replies
MrVandemar • today at 5:00 AM
Marginalia is almost already this. It flags sites that have advertising, javascript, etc. meaning that you can easily avoid those.
You are proposing to fix something that is not broken by adding things to it. My point is, the Internet has already evolved in this specific way for a reason.
Few old school sites like Wikipedia aside, modern Internet is serving a very different purpose: being an entertainment platform, being a backbone for building applications and monetizing them.
Yes, technically there are still underlying networks with instant delivery of content to any place on Earth, but maintaining something like Wikipedia on top of modern Internet is like trying to maintain a quiet library inside of a Casino. Monetization means don’t fit. You need a quiet space to read and study, not dingling sounds and bright lights, not free vodka and 50 security guys.
We need a new paradigm of information sharing and new ecosystem if we want to do things differently.