We can bring back the cozy vibes of the old web neighborhoods. Not by regressing to a bygone era, but by building the web one-and-a-half that should have been; a Web of the People.
It is increasingly clear to me that a lot of directions Web 1.0 was evolving in were diverted or just killed off by Big Tech’s landgrab which built walled gardens. I see the Fediverse as a return to the idea of blogs (micro and macro), forums, etc but in a more natural progression to interoperability. This still isn’t perfect and there may be other early web ideas, like webrings, that improve discoverablity.
It’s a pity they don’t really talk about federated webrings and largely ignore the opportunities for webrings in the wider Fediverse instead focusing on Matrix and Discord.
And I was thinking we needed Web 2.0b, they are suggesting an early “fork” Web 1.5.