A lot of the web is human. You just can’t discover it. It doesn’t rank highly in search results. It doesn’t go viral on social networks. It doesn’t get wildly upvoted on aggregator sites like this one.
That’s the fundamental dilemma of not just the web, but the Internet, as a pull medium opposed to a push medium like television or radio. A human can not remember every URL. From your blank web browser you can only go to URLs you know. Then the only web pages you will ever see are ones that are linked, directly or indirectly, from the ones you know.
Most people only know Google, Facebook, etc. Anything that isn’t linked to from those sites effectively does not exist.
But it does exist. It’s a whole forest full of trees falling and not making a sound. It’s up to you to do what you can to find it.
For sure. I agree. Maybe I should rephrase to "how can we make the human stuff discoverable again?" Or, can we make tools to help people to find it? Because if people can't find it, less and less people will use it and then it will later become inactive. Or, should we tell people by word of mouth again?
I love the idea of bringing back human vetted directories. As long as the vetters stay human and sites are readily removed for grifting/SEO optimizing/AI click farming. I think that means they need to stay niche though. I really miss people making content because they wanted no and not because they want to make a living from it.
That’s the fundamental dilemma of not just the web, but the Internet, as a pull medium opposed to a push medium like television or radio. A human can not remember every URL. From your blank web browser you can only go to URLs you know. Then the only web pages you will ever see are ones that are linked, directly or indirectly, from the ones you know.
Most people only know Google, Facebook, etc. Anything that isn’t linked to from those sites effectively does not exist.
But it does exist. It’s a whole forest full of trees falling and not making a sound. It’s up to you to do what you can to find it.