Ethical Software by Alex Bunardzic

I’ve started recently bumping into all kinds of people who seem to share similar sentiments about the world wide web. That sentiment could be summed up in one sentence: the web is broken!

Lots of people seem to think and feel that something is not right with the web. What’s more interesting is that many of these people get agitated enough with their ‘discovery’ that they feel compelled to spring into action and offer alternative solutions.

What’s even more interesting is that, historically, we could say that the web was never capable of working according to these people’s expectations. And indeed, if you talk to them, they will admit that their ‘insight’ that the web seems broken is not really new. It is just that they’ve now reached the point where they feel that the broken web has been going on for too long, and that now that it’s on its ‘last legs’, it’s high time we get a replacement for it. Something better, something that actually works.

Right now, there appear to be many proposed systems underway that seem to offer a gentler, friendlier replacement for the wild and wooly web. I’ll enlist some of the ones I’m aware of:

1. Semantic web (the web that offers content that travels with its own meta-data)
2. Secure web (essentially, vendorized web)
3. Fully synchronized web (basically, guarantees no broken links)
4. Global operating system (dismissing with the web altogether and replacing it with a nicer, friendlier platform that will offer richer multimedia experience)
5. Search-free web (where your network of friends will anticipate and supply all that you’ll ever need or want, effectively rendering the need for searching obsolete)

I will now briefly address some of these proposed solutions, before I conclude with my own findings.

1. Semantic web

As we all know, the web is a catch-all collection of semi-random resources published world wide. Those resources are mostly represented as text, or, in rarer cases, as images, video and audio clips. All these resource representations are almost exclusively offered in a laissez faire fashion, meaning they are mostly unstructured, stream-of-consciousness type of material.

Because of that, it gets to be challenging to automate the processing of such material. Proponents of the semantic web (such as Calais) propose a solution in the form of imposing a bureaucratic infrastructure that will be placed on top of the free-range content.

The above solution is the manifestation of an effort to create a machine-friendly web. Machines are notorious for their inability to cope with context and common-sense, so they need to rely on more formalized systems in order to function. Semantic overhead proposed by the semantic web crowd aims at precisely that — decorate the free-range content with the bureaucratic overhead that would assist the machines in processing it.

The ‘barking up the wrong tree’ factor: the web was originally designed for human consumption; retrofitting it to enable the machine consumption feels like attempting to fit a square peg into a round hole.

2. Secure web

The realization that the web is not secure should not come as a big surprise to anyone. For some people, that fact alone is enough to hand in the verdict that the web is broken. These people then feel compelled to start looking for a more suitable replacement.

So why is it that the web is not secure? Is it because of the fact the information that is traveling across the network could be eavesdropped on? No, because the eavesdropping risk is not something that is unique to the web as a medium of communication.

Is it because of the fact that the web allows people to misrepresent themselves and act as confidence trickers? No, because again, this is not something that is unique to the web. Confidence tricksters and impostors have been around since the dawn of time.

So what is it, then, that makes the web feel insecure? The answer is — we don’t know. The web is not fundamentally different than any other social situation one might find in the real world. It is mostly the novelty and the unfamiliarity with the new medium that forces people to feel insecure when socializing on the web. With that conclusion, we see that most of the efforts that go toward replacing the web with some pie-in-the-sky more secure medium is merely serving to appease people’s anxieties, and not to really solve the unsolvable problem of social trust. In other words, it’s a moot point, or, fool’s gold to try and instigate the iron clad security in the social context.

3. Fully synchronized web

This is the engineers’ wet dream. Create a large system, with many movable parts, where everything s perfectly synchronized and there are no glitches and nothing falls through the cracks. Engineers would pretty much kill to be able to implement such a system, but the web ain’t that, not by any stretch of imagination. The web is a collection of extremely loosely coupled resources, meaning that there will always be broken links on the web. It’s a fact of life, and we need to learn to live with that.

4. Global operating system

Again, the engineering point of view seems to be that, since the web is running on a large collection of extremely loosely coupled disparate operating systems, it is flakey and therefore unreliable. They’d prefer to consolidate it and make it run on a single operating system. Which will then automatically become a global operating system.

However, this ain’t going to happen for the simple reason that globally, we tend to frown upon relying on a single center of power and control. This is not to say, however, that there won’t be many Dr. Evils and Mini Mes out there plotting to rule the word. Only that these guys will continue to look comical and pathetic, and will therefore continue to provide fodder for Mike Mayers and other comedians who will continue to make spoof movies covering the ‘rule the world’ conspiracy topics etc.

5. Search-free web

Some people feel that the web is broken because search is broken. Or is it the other way around? I’m never certain. Be as it may, they propose that the replacement for the ‘broken’ web will render any need for searching obsolete.

The gentler, friendlier replacement for the web that these people propose will focus on the behavioral patterns of its users and will then be able to anticipate its users’ needs. In preemptively offering the ‘goodies’ to its users, such hypothetical product will be able to fulfill their needs and so they’ll never again feel the urge to go out on a limb and search for anything.

Sounds utopian to me. There are very many holes in that particular vision, and I don’t want to bore you here with picking the glaring omissions apart. I will say, though, that the shortcoming of searching on the web today stems mostly from the wrong bias of the search engines, who are exclusively biased toward harvesting the past. More likely than not, when people are searching for something, they are interested in harvesting the future (i.e. the upcoming, or the about-to-happen events).

My conclusion

My view of the web is that it’s akin to a virus. As such, it is functioning as expected. The virus is not broken, therefore there is no need to fix it.

The virus may cause the system it’s infected to become broken (temporarily or permanently). So if there is anything in need of fixing, it’s the broken, infested systems that the web had rendered dysfunctional. So the ‘barking up a wrong tree’ factor here is: don’t waste time on fixing the virus, work on fixing the affected systems.

Over and out.