Yeah, that's a good point. One of the things that I think could help would be to make the basic technology stack somehow different from html/css/js, so that different (not necessarily more or less) things are possible in the new medium. I don't know what that should look like, because my own preference is strongly toward text-oriented content which is well-served by the current stack, but having a different kind of toys in the playground might be enough to entice people to contribute all by itself.
> Otherwise I don't see it as more than a toy.
I was a kid so I could well be wrong, but my memory of the early net was that most 'regular' people kind of saw it as a toy. It wasn't until the start of the .com boom that it really became something different. Being seen as a toy might actually be good in this case.
I love text based content, too. Maybe this is a chance to return to using the terminal by default (I learned about the Bloomberg terminal recently; I guess people still use text-based interfaces a lot).
I like the idea of using a different tech stack, though it would have to be very simple to keep up with (and surpass) current levels of innovation. Hence, the terminal?
> my memory of the early net was that most 'regular' people kind of saw it as a toy
I think you're a few years ahead of me, then. I don't remember much of that time. But the difference might be (and I hope not) that the general web was a much more unique tool back then, and people knew about it from sheer novelty. I think the chicken/egg problem of users is harder to solve in this case. Not saying it can't be done, just saying it has to be solved intentionally and with effort.
Well, it seems there are two of us on the Internet. I do almost everything except browsing the web straight from the terminal.
> people knew about it from sheer novelty
This is a really good point. The essence of the question probably boils down to how many people like us there are out there, who want an alternative badly enough to work on it (and in it) while it's small and sparse. The only real feature I can think of that might seriously set it apart from today's net for everyone else is privacy protection, which could be built in from the ground up.
> the other net would be more interesting to just browse around and share stuff on.
What if that was the focus of the system? Make it super easy to publish and find Information. Webpages are honestly kind of hard to work with, and the tendency is to make them way too flashy. Remake the incentives of the system based on what was learned from the first version, and something really cool, and super useful, might be the result. I imagine that a terminal-interface focus might be instrumental.
> Otherwise I don't see it as more than a toy.
I was a kid so I could well be wrong, but my memory of the early net was that most 'regular' people kind of saw it as a toy. It wasn't until the start of the .com boom that it really became something different. Being seen as a toy might actually be good in this case.