Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web (2017)
The author talks about the web as &quot;one of humanity&#x27;s greatest inventions.&quot; which is now in crisis:<p>&gt; And now, we the architects of the modern web — web designers, UX designers, developers, creative directors, social media managers, data scientists, product managers, start-up people, strategists — are destroying it.<p>The interests of tech companies, investors and web professionals have not always aligned with the best interests of end-users and so there has been a gradual erosion of the freedoms embedded in the foundations of the web itself.<p>My favourite StarTrek moment is Captain Pike&#x27;s statement &quot;We are always in a fight for the future&quot;. Given the current state of the web, this feels truer than ever. Unlike the author, however, I don&#x27;t think the answer is better web pages. Any chance of us winning the fight for user freedoms must be bigger and bolder than that.<p>There has been an entire generation of entrepreneurs and investors who have thought and planned strategically how to shape the web to work in their best interests. A meaningful counter has to be equally intentional and coordinated to stand a chance at shaping the course technology takes. We are in a fight for the future and we need to think bigger to stand a chance of winning that fight.