Web Dark Ages
You know when the Web Dark Ages are? They&#x27;re upon us <i>right now</i>. With Google, Fb extracting all value out of the extant web, github &amp; co having &quot;educated&quot; developers what to expect from software download sites and depending on network effects, StackExchange and a couple other sites covering &quot;How To&quot; material (not meant as a SE critique) and ad prices going down, the only &quot;rational&quot; incentive for new content is to publish polarizing clickbait. In the 1990s and 2000s, all kinds of Wikis and collaboration sites emerged; in the early 2010s, the nascent mobile web prompted a vibrant web design community, but when was the last time you went to a new web site? The web was once meant as an easy way for self-publishing, bypassing middle-men. Turns out we&#x27;ve just exchanged one middleman with another. I&#x27;m especially pissed at the staged HTML5 campaign to yield power over web standards to Google. HTML5 chose a shield as a logo, but who&#x27;s going to shield us from Google and WHATWG destroying the web?