How the blog broke the web (2017)
Reference sites still exist, Wikipedia isn't organized by reverse-chronological and MediaWiki is a far more formidable CMS than MT ever was.<p>Same goes for ReadTheDocs, Sphinx, Jekyll, Hugo, or any number of static site generators that power the infinite libraries of documentation, reference material, and personal sites on the web.<p>What the author is bemoaning is the loss of the eclectic, bespoke, personal-style of homepage that existed in the early web. These sites still exist of course, they're just a much smaller percentage of the content. What the author fails to consider is that this diminished position has nothing to do with the tools, and everything to do with the population of people who were coming online in the early 2000s.<p>The strangeness and lovable oddities of the early web were a function of <i>the people who populated it</i>. The generic, least common denominator status quo of the now is similarly defined because <i>everyone</i> is online, and so the content distribution reflects that.<p>Everyone's Eternal September comes at some point, for the author it was October 2001. Internet is full, AOL users go home.