in. Part 1: Internet fantasies of the future
Disclaimer: We open a series of stories describing various issues and problems related, for the most part, to the present and future of the Internet and our vision of possible solutions. Often, following will be published announcements mentioned in the stories of projects. We ask to be treated with understanding: something will be changed, but something will remain fantasies; today we are a small team, but with a great desire to do in this world, even if only a little, but better.
Victor returned home in a great mood - he managed to get another rarity for his collection of the past. Carefully removing a small thin and transparent plastic box with the logo of a company that had already sunk into oblivion from a paper bag, he turned it over with interest. Then, with a sinking heart, he opened it and brought it up to the sunny window in order to better view the contents. Before him was a disc with the words “CD-R 650Mb”. With a slight click, detaching the disk from the substrate and turning it over, Victor saw a slightly perceptible multicolored sun glare reflected by the reverse mirror side of the disk ran across the room.
- You got it!
Victor's younger brother flew into the room like a whirlwind.
- Give! Let me have a look!
Snatching the little thing flaming from the sun in the hands of his brother, he did not pay attention to Victor, who was dissatisfied with this unceremonious attitude to rarity, brought the disc closer to his eyes.
- Hmm ... And there is only 650 megabytes? However, it was not very much that in the past they saved on personal space if they wrote all their data on such large, but tiny disks. Imagine what a mountain they need to record at least one holographic film!
My brother grinned, but he didn’t talk again about the formats that used to be and how much space they took on the media, but he sat down at the table-screen and, having performed a swift gesture with his password, opened his personal page “in”. Few people mentioned this name in the conversation, for all it was a single entry point, respectively, and there was no sense in designating it either. They just talked generically - the network. However, Victor read that not so long ago it was divided into separate fragments called websites and it was necessary to know their addresses in order to find the necessary information. It was searched directly on the websites, or through the then very popular services called search engines. He even knew the name of one of them, but it was funny and constantly flew out of his head.
')
Only then did projects begin to appear, the authors of which approached the question from the other side and swapped the essence of things — now the information began to search for the user. Victor was young and only recently started working on web development, but he had already heard stories from older colleagues that before, instead of just developing the logic and functionality of projects and filling them with data, I had to think about such things as a separate design and UI for everyone (!) of the site - here he always felt extremely sorry for the users who tried to understand each time how, where and what was located, and at the same time be content with only the functionality that the owner of the resource considered necessary to add. Or vice versa, unwanted elements of the imposed UI loomed before our eyes. And the developers at the same time faced with a cunning beast and his name was cross-browser compatibility! Victor did not fully understand what the problem was, but the expression on the faces of the narrators gave some idea of ​​the scale of the disaster. Also, phrases like “to display normally on everything, $ # @!, Zoo devices!” Dread terrible monsters with which web developers fought, like knights in shining armor, drew in his brain. Victor also liked reading about knights.
He also vaguely imagined what the word “caching” meant, but he knew that in those days there was not only a slow connection, but he also had to download tons of garbage responsible for displaying each individual site, and a lot of this disgrace also repeatedly duplicated! However, he tried not to be so gullible and not to believe every word of the storytellers - it often seemed to him that the elders simply played him, telling fictions and chuckling behind his back. Although the narratives about the attacks called the terrible word DDoS or XSS, SQL injection, he listened with his mouth open, imagining virtual battles for some reason in the style of the times of pirates, apparently from the fact that the word “pirates” also occasionally appeared in references to experienced . But he still had to ask about it in detail later. Even if this is true, now many types of attacks simply cannot be, the system only accepts data in textual form (pure data) and gives them away, this data can not harm either the client or the default server. In addition, this approach allows you to instantly send tiny kilobyte pages, because only useful data comes to the client side or back to the server without HTML and JS, CSS garbage.
He also knew that before the pages were cut off from the ubiquitous processing by the semantic core of the network, the very same search engines that he already mentioned today were engaged in this task to a very limited extent. He represented them with colossi on clay feet. Victor liked to find colorful analogies. Millions daily went to them to bow in order to get an answer - where is the information they need on the network and woe to you if you don’t know how to ask! He also heard blood-spilling stories about spam and non-relevant advertising everywhere. They say that it was almost on all sites. Victor found it very useful that the network offered at the right time the goods he needed based on his preferences and requirements for them, but he did not understand what was the point of showing the same advertising information to everyone. The authors of articles, books, music, video, manufacturers of various products - everyone had to participate in a frantic race for consumers, and they, in turn, were also looking for the information and products they needed. Incredible funds were spent on advertising, which, of course, had a strong effect on prices, not to mention the fact that advertising was almost never objective and simply deceived consumers, and at best embellished the product. They say that then the pieces of the network called sites, simply did not know how to distinguish between users and did not know about their interests.
Victor again became incredibly sorry for users. He represented them as unhappy little animals mumbling across a huge maze, trying to get through to the information they needed through the jungle of advertising and spam that grew in abundance around in the form of huge trees and tried to catch the user with their crooked branches. And even if they managed to avoid them, it was too early to rejoice, they also had to look at their feet, otherwise you risk falling into the trap of scam sites scattered all over the network. The Trust Level concept was not yet used as a universal tool to rid the network of fraudsters and spam forever.
But the most insidious were social networks! Many users did not even suspect or simply did not listen to people warning about the danger of giving their personal data to similar resources. Listening to stories about such networks, Victor only shook his head in amazement and incredulity. Now, each user had a separate reliable Vault-server who jealously stored the owner’s data, and was seriously punished for stealing personal information, but that someone voluntarily gave it to someone ?? No, apparently, it’s still the same stories or, at least, greatly exaggerated stories, like so much about what the older colleagues told him about the past of the Internet. The only thing he didn’t doubt was that almost all the information was stored by the users not like on Vault servers now, but locally or on disks like what he was holding in his hand now - a piece of the past shimmering in the sun!
Victor returned home in a great mood - he managed to get another rarity for his collection of the past. Carefully removing a small thin and transparent plastic box with the logo of a company that had already sunk into oblivion from a paper bag, he turned it over with interest. Then, with a sinking heart, he opened it and brought it up to the sunny window in order to better view the contents. Before him was a disc with the words “CD-R 650Mb”. With a slight click, detaching the disk from the substrate and turning it over, Victor saw a slightly perceptible multicolored sun glare reflected by the reverse mirror side of the disk ran across the room.
- You got it!
Victor's younger brother flew into the room like a whirlwind.
- Give! Let me have a look!
Snatching the little thing flaming from the sun in the hands of his brother, he did not pay attention to Victor, who was dissatisfied with this unceremonious attitude to rarity, brought the disc closer to his eyes.
- Hmm ... And there is only 650 megabytes? However, it was not very much that in the past they saved on personal space if they wrote all their data on such large, but tiny disks. Imagine what a mountain they need to record at least one holographic film!
My brother grinned, but he didn’t talk again about the formats that used to be and how much space they took on the media, but he sat down at the table-screen and, having performed a swift gesture with his password, opened his personal page “in”. Few people mentioned this name in the conversation, for all it was a single entry point, respectively, and there was no sense in designating it either. They just talked generically - the network. However, Victor read that not so long ago it was divided into separate fragments called websites and it was necessary to know their addresses in order to find the necessary information. It was searched directly on the websites, or through the then very popular services called search engines. He even knew the name of one of them, but it was funny and constantly flew out of his head.
')
Only then did projects begin to appear, the authors of which approached the question from the other side and swapped the essence of things — now the information began to search for the user. Victor was young and only recently started working on web development, but he had already heard stories from older colleagues that before, instead of just developing the logic and functionality of projects and filling them with data, I had to think about such things as a separate design and UI for everyone (!) of the site - here he always felt extremely sorry for the users who tried to understand each time how, where and what was located, and at the same time be content with only the functionality that the owner of the resource considered necessary to add. Or vice versa, unwanted elements of the imposed UI loomed before our eyes. And the developers at the same time faced with a cunning beast and his name was cross-browser compatibility! Victor did not fully understand what the problem was, but the expression on the faces of the narrators gave some idea of ​​the scale of the disaster. Also, phrases like “to display normally on everything, $ # @!, Zoo devices!” Dread terrible monsters with which web developers fought, like knights in shining armor, drew in his brain. Victor also liked reading about knights.
He also vaguely imagined what the word “caching” meant, but he knew that in those days there was not only a slow connection, but he also had to download tons of garbage responsible for displaying each individual site, and a lot of this disgrace also repeatedly duplicated! However, he tried not to be so gullible and not to believe every word of the storytellers - it often seemed to him that the elders simply played him, telling fictions and chuckling behind his back. Although the narratives about the attacks called the terrible word DDoS or XSS, SQL injection, he listened with his mouth open, imagining virtual battles for some reason in the style of the times of pirates, apparently from the fact that the word “pirates” also occasionally appeared in references to experienced . But he still had to ask about it in detail later. Even if this is true, now many types of attacks simply cannot be, the system only accepts data in textual form (pure data) and gives them away, this data can not harm either the client or the default server. In addition, this approach allows you to instantly send tiny kilobyte pages, because only useful data comes to the client side or back to the server without HTML and JS, CSS garbage.
He also knew that before the pages were cut off from the ubiquitous processing by the semantic core of the network, the very same search engines that he already mentioned today were engaged in this task to a very limited extent. He represented them with colossi on clay feet. Victor liked to find colorful analogies. Millions daily went to them to bow in order to get an answer - where is the information they need on the network and woe to you if you don’t know how to ask! He also heard blood-spilling stories about spam and non-relevant advertising everywhere. They say that it was almost on all sites. Victor found it very useful that the network offered at the right time the goods he needed based on his preferences and requirements for them, but he did not understand what was the point of showing the same advertising information to everyone. The authors of articles, books, music, video, manufacturers of various products - everyone had to participate in a frantic race for consumers, and they, in turn, were also looking for the information and products they needed. Incredible funds were spent on advertising, which, of course, had a strong effect on prices, not to mention the fact that advertising was almost never objective and simply deceived consumers, and at best embellished the product. They say that then the pieces of the network called sites, simply did not know how to distinguish between users and did not know about their interests.
Victor again became incredibly sorry for users. He represented them as unhappy little animals mumbling across a huge maze, trying to get through to the information they needed through the jungle of advertising and spam that grew in abundance around in the form of huge trees and tried to catch the user with their crooked branches. And even if they managed to avoid them, it was too early to rejoice, they also had to look at their feet, otherwise you risk falling into the trap of scam sites scattered all over the network. The Trust Level concept was not yet used as a universal tool to rid the network of fraudsters and spam forever.
But the most insidious were social networks! Many users did not even suspect or simply did not listen to people warning about the danger of giving their personal data to similar resources. Listening to stories about such networks, Victor only shook his head in amazement and incredulity. Now, each user had a separate reliable Vault-server who jealously stored the owner’s data, and was seriously punished for stealing personal information, but that someone voluntarily gave it to someone ?? No, apparently, it’s still the same stories or, at least, greatly exaggerated stories, like so much about what the older colleagues told him about the past of the Internet. The only thing he didn’t doubt was that almost all the information was stored by the users not like on Vault servers now, but locally or on disks like what he was holding in his hand now - a piece of the past shimmering in the sun!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/165049/
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