HishamTIL the WWW originally had a logo, and nothing else is better at expressing the naive academic techno-optimism from the 1990s than a design that looks hand-coded in PostScript and that slogan at the top.
Katie@hisham_hm it turns out what we know is that everyone wants to be furries
Jason Petersen (he)@hisham_hm “just copy the K&R cover”
@hisham_hm also that Optima screams “I am very familiar with LaTeX house styles of university math and CS departments”
FiXato@hisham_hm maybe a constant reminder of that slogan would've kept us from drifting towards "Let's collect what we know about you."
@FiXato today's motto of the web is pretty much "Let's Share What We Know [About You To Our Advertising Partners]"
(now with a subtitle "Accept All, Refuse All, Customize", thanks to the EU)
@hisham_hm
"Accept All, Refuse All (*), Customise
(*) except 'legitimate' interests; we still want you to manually object to each of them hidden underneath each heading."
jim68000@FiXato @hisham_hm and now post ChatGPT “let’s fill up the rest with stuff we don’t really know”
barefootliam@FiXato @hisham_hm in a way, that naïve optimism is what led to the privacy problems. After all, passwords were originally only uuencoded (a plaintext cipher) and there was no session management. The botched attempt at session management by Netscape gave us cookies. But, a more complex Web might never have succeeded at all.
Christopher Neitzert@barefootliam @FiXato @hisham_hm Great points Liam, though I think our openness problem predates this; all of this was built with an academic perspective on privacy, halfdouble (www.halfdouble.io) is a great example of the need for greater abstraction between connectivity and direct device access.
@xenophile @FiXato @hisham_hm yes, the Web was developed in a research environment, not with undergrad/high school students, and with sanctions available for bad behaviour.
@barefootliam @FiXato @hisham_hm Yes precisely. but I'm thinking of something even before that. I heard a talk years ago, I think a SAGE event 20+ years ago, where someone was talking about the hubaloo when Ken Thompson introduced passwd and how upset some people were at the control over their ability to create freely. From my perspective being about as old as the epoch itself, it seemed quite silly a notion then and now it gives me the burning desire to rush right out and rewrite every stack all at once :D
@xenophile @FiXato @hisham_hm to be fair, consider Microsoft, where for years the assumption was that if there was a network it was corporate and behind a firewall and could be trusted. This attitude persisted well into the 201x era. Hindsight and all that...
@barefootliam @FiXato @hisham_hm whats that gibson quote, the future is already here, just not evenly distributed?
Ed RossI like this bit from "Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by It's Inventor" *
"Friends at CERN gave me a hard time, saying it would never take off - especially since it yielded an acronym that was nine syllables long when spoken. Nonetheless, I decided to forge ahead. I would call my system the 'World Wide Web'."
So glad I still have my copy of this book.
* Affiliate link to the book:
https://amzn.to/3XIANfj
Barbara Warmbein (baw)@hisham_hm fun side fact: Robert Cailliau is synesthetic - he sees letters in colour. Ws are green to him, so the logo could only ever have this colour (esthetic or not)!
Matt Austern@bawHH @hisham_hm I even knew that fact, because back in the day there was a WWW FAQ list, and one of the frequently asked questions on it was why the Ws were green.
Maria Bustillos@hisham_hm the @internetarchive has still the same vibe, tilde club, to some degree reddit and mefi... what others?
@maria @internetarchive wikipedia, I guess?
Dave@maria @hisham_hm there's still techno-utopianism in the various projects sometimes called "the smolnet" https://ploum.net/2022-10-06-archiving-smolnet.html
Mar 🐧@doiheart @maria @hisham_hm Indeed. I get the same vibes browsing through the phlogosphere (Gopher). E-Mail lists do as well carry that feeling discussed in this thread.
Dale Trexel@hisham_hm I misread that as "techbro-optimism" which is very much a different thing!
@DaleTrexel Yes, _very_ different indeed!
Sylvhem@hisham_hm I think we should bring them back.
Rigo Wenning@hisham_hm Robert had a totally different idea about the web and wasn't naive at all.
@alcinnz
Today, his idea is realized somewhat in Wikipedia and somewhat in archive.org.
alcinnz@rigo @hisham_hm Hmmmm, I think "Let's Share What We Know" pretty well covers how I use the World Wide Web...
There's a lot of fascinating personal sites out there!
Peter Ashford@rigo @hisham_hm @alcinnz yeah the www pretty much achieved what it set out to do... and then corporations subverted it all.
Skölpadawan@hisham_hm it's kind of beautiful... Sort of pure.
stux⚡️@hisham_hm when it really stood for something 😮 
We need that back
Frosty ❄️🌨️@stux @hisham_hm it's always stood for world wide Web. Most people just either don't know it or never bother to ask why it was there in the first place
@stux @hisham_hm we have it right here in Mastodon.. Wikipedia also. There's lots of good stuff if you see past the techbro wrought nightmate
Tim Carmody@hisham_hm I used to have a laptop sticker with this logo. Actually, @ftrain, do you have any more of those stickers?
Ben Rosengart
Lee 🌏@hisham_hm
I remember people used to ask me
"What's the difference between "the Information Super Highway and the World Wide Web"
I remember people used to ask me
"What's the difference between "the Information Super Highway and the World Wide Web"
@MrLee @hisham_hm "one of them exists"
Spriteful Dev@hisham_hm @stux well to be fair it’s still people sharing what they know.
What they know to be true, what they know to be false, what they know to be a complete guess, what they know will make them money and what they know will annoy other people.
Mission accomplished…. Ish.
Elle of the Past 
@hisham_hm We should bring it back!
JT@hisham_hm Gopher Space was better, but UMinn murdered it when they got greedy. Then Mosaic offered images in-line with text and the stage was set for the commercialization of the Internet. The world would be better with Gopher for academics (and their ilk) and AOL for everybody else.
marilyn c. cole@hisham_hm gosh, this reminds me so much of that old app, The Print Shop, that had greeting cards you could fold twice out of letter paper. Lots of arch font stylization options
Andy Aspaas@hisham_hm Optima 👌👍
bruno 🎸3 W's in "let's share What We knoW": the account is good!
dressupgeekout@hisham_hm The "Information Superhighway" days
Andric@hisham_hm One could argue that without naïveté they wouldn’t have done it.
Calyxa@hisham_hm Why do I remember reading a thing back in the early '90's about "why are the w's green?" and it being about #synaesthesia because of course W's are green.
Aaron Priven@calyxa @hisham_hm yes, I remember that too. My mother had synesthesia too and I remember asking her if she also thought Ws were green. She said no.
europlus 
@hisham_hm @molly0xfff a definite æsthetic.
David JONES@hisham_hm our @FontsInUse have a short entry on the WWW logo:https://fontsinuse.com/uses/40770/world-wide-web-logotype
Andrew Green@hisham_hm a rare use of Optima that doesn’t look like a healthcare or beauty brand
Bear@hisham_hm @alex Reminds me of when every poster was done using WordArt.
Softwarewolf@hisham_hm Ah, the good ol' days, when we cared more about sharing than hoarding.
Stéphane Bortzmeyer@hisham_hm There is nothing naive in the will to share knowledge.
Jake has moved!@hisham_hm I need that on a ringer tee.
𝖓@hisham_hm We should start using it.
wakest likes your bugs ⁂@hisham_hm I need this an an emojo stat
p x l s@hisham_hm Dated it may be, but the principle of sharing knowledge is timeless. Here’s to a return to a Web based on sharing for the common good, rather than one which sees corporations profit off us all.
Alexandre Oliva (moved to @back then, WWW was just What We Wanted
now, When We Weep
now, When We Weep
juho@hisham_hm I've also hand-coded stuff in PostScript.. Not sure if I'm proud about that.
Nerd That Talks Good@hisham_hm ahhh, I remember when the ‘Net was like a sweet summer child, full of innocence and wonder.
Then Bezos happened.
Senny@hisham_hm I was already feeling old before I saw this. 😅