The ‘Form’ Element Created the Modern Web. Was It a Big Mistake?
June 9, 2022 11:11 AM Subscribe
No one ever knows what they’re unleashing. They don’t even know there’s a leash.
I’ve been given a time machine. Would I send a Terminator back to the web standards meetings circa 1994 to eliminate the element? I don’t know. If anything could defeat a Terminator, it’s attending a web standards meeting.
A little HTML widget gave us all-powerful Amazon and Facebook. There's no closing Pandora's text box now.
Tell me you're suffering from engineer's disease without telling me you're suffering from engineer's disease. It's getting tiresome to get the argument that "if only we did X, we could have engineered our way out of a social problem," especially when there is so little consideration as to why that social problem happened.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:26 AM on June 9, 2022 [42 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:26 AM on June 9, 2022 [42 favorites]
The web without <form> is read-only. You can argue for the utility of a read-only collection of documents in some contexts, but it would never have become anything approaching what we have right now. Without <form>, there's no Wikipedia, no private document repositories with web access (because you can't log in without being able to send credentials), and no smart phones. I guess there's a certain brand of Luddite who thinks that's a good thing, but I don't think most people would agree.
posted by Mayor West at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Mayor West at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
This premise makes about as much sense as blaming copper wiring for the existence of 8kun. They should have known what they were unleashing!
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 11:35 AM on June 9, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 11:35 AM on June 9, 2022 [17 favorites]
A read-only Internet would have been strictly less useful than the existing BBSes! It would have been replaced by a read-write AOL or Minitel or some other proprietary network.
No, the original sin of the internet is probably the 3rd-party cookie.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:39 AM on June 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
No, the original sin of the internet is probably the 3rd-party cookie.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:39 AM on June 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
(okay I realize I meant Web not internet, but you know what I mean. Also gopher was read-only and got elbowed out by the web so, there's another piece of evidence that a formless Web would have suffered the same fate)
posted by BungaDunga at 11:45 AM on June 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 11:45 AM on June 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
From the article: Here’s the thing: If it hadn’t been <form>, it would have been another element—maybe one with a more accurate name, like <money-vacuum> ...
XMLHttpRequest--which typically doesn't use XML and doesn't necessarily even use HTTP--seems worth mentioning here as the enabler of "Web 2.0" transactions. I get the joke about how form could have been named more accurately, but it's easy to imagine the world where it's named less accurately too.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:49 AM on June 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
XMLHttpRequest--which typically doesn't use XML and doesn't necessarily even use HTTP--seems worth mentioning here as the enabler of "Web 2.0" transactions. I get the joke about how form could have been named more accurately, but it's easy to imagine the world where it's named less accurately too.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:49 AM on June 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
The monkey's paw curls, and suddenly, across the planet, Chrome and Safari disappear, replaced in every instance by Lotus Notes.
posted by eschatfische at 11:51 AM on June 9, 2022 [50 favorites]
posted by eschatfische at 11:51 AM on June 9, 2022 [50 favorites]
This is pretty misleading, historically speaking:
In its earliest days it grew img tags to become visual; it grew table tags to become tabular—and more than 25 years ago (version 2) it added the form element, making it interactive.
Both images and forms were introduced in HTML2, which was the first published spec for HTML. (Tables weren't introduced until version 3). In a very real sense, the form element has always been part of the web.
posted by ook at 11:54 AM on June 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
In its earliest days it grew img tags to become visual; it grew table tags to become tabular—and more than 25 years ago (version 2) it added the form element, making it interactive.
Both images and forms were introduced in HTML2, which was the first published spec for HTML. (Tables weren't introduced until version 3). In a very real sense, the form element has always been part of the web.
posted by ook at 11:54 AM on June 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
So . . . two way communication was a bad idea? If only the terminator could destroy language.
posted by Garm at 11:57 AM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Garm at 11:57 AM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:57 AM on June 9, 2022 [50 favorites]
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:57 AM on June 9, 2022 [50 favorites]
“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
posted by Garm at 11:57 AM on June 9, 2022 [37 favorites]
posted by Garm at 11:57 AM on June 9, 2022 [37 favorites]
IIRC, TBL himself envisioned the web as being a host for live, editable documents, not the "read-only medium for physics papers" that the author claims it was meant to be.
posted by adamrice at 11:58 AM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by adamrice at 11:58 AM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think Paul is coming from a place where many of us greybeards are: The early web seemed like a revolutionary technology that would upend the power dynamic of the one-to-many publishing model. "Anyone" could have a website and therefore, your blog posts could reach everyone with a browser. Turns out that people are social animals and the actual revolution was many-to-many communication. And that revolution produced most of what is good and everything that is bad with what the internet is today.
In any case: Pesky kids, get off my form!
posted by gwint at 11:58 AM on June 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
In any case: Pesky kids, get off my form!
posted by gwint at 11:58 AM on June 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
Paul Buchheit called form.submit() on a hidden <iframe> for Gmail 1.0, and thus the monster AJAX came lurching into the mortal world. Coincidentally, I think that was one of the first instances of minimized JavaScript as well, though I don't know if both sins are required for original sin. Perhaps we can split into three or more sects.
posted by credulous at 12:04 PM on June 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by credulous at 12:04 PM on June 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
The form element was necessary, but it was badly implemented in browsers. This, however, is nothing new - the entire stack is one kluge on top of another, ad Infinitum. If we had a time machine that allowed us to go back and magically fix all the current day problems across the stack, I (or someone like me) would be typing this exact same comment.
As much as I am loathe to admit it, there is no perfect engineering solution. Just decisions, good and bad, layers upon layers.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:19 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
As much as I am loathe to admit it, there is no perfect engineering solution. Just decisions, good and bad, layers upon layers.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:19 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Tell me you're suffering from engineer's disease without telling me you're suffering from engineer's disease.
I have bad news for the "only known cure for engineer's disease is a liberal arts education" crowd: this author has a B.A. in English.
posted by pwnguin at 12:28 PM on June 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
I have bad news for the "only known cure for engineer's disease is a liberal arts education" crowd: this author has a B.A. in English.
posted by pwnguin at 12:28 PM on June 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
What an incredibly stupid article.
posted by interogative mood at 12:44 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 12:44 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
i do find this weirdly framed. as the article states, if it didn’t have forms it would have had something else. the real demon is the internet itself. even though it pays my mortgage, i think we would be better off without it. you can still have databases, computer aided design and digital art and so on, just no internet. mail a dvd to someone to share your work, use the sneakernet, but turn off the demon internet and get us back to earth
posted by dis_integration at 12:47 PM on June 9, 2022
posted by dis_integration at 12:47 PM on June 9, 2022
"I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without <form>, and void(); and the heavens, and they had no #fff" -Jer 4:24
muh muh muh mai vi-ola
posted by weston at 12:51 PM on June 9, 2022 [16 favorites]
muh muh muh mai vi-ola
posted by weston at 12:51 PM on June 9, 2022 [16 favorites]
>without is read-only
eh I do AJAX $.post()s instead of mucking about with form submission jazz.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:52 PM on June 9, 2022
eh I do AJAX $.post()s instead of mucking about with form submission jazz.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 12:52 PM on June 9, 2022
As a kid I discovered that you could put a 'mailto:' in the action attribute of a form and (at least in my Internet-In-A-Box windows environment) the browser would automatically open up the email client with a new message with the encoded form already in the message body.
For a kid who had neither access to /cgi-bin nor any idea how to even write a CGI script, I thought this was awesome and I used it to add a guest book to my homepage. I'd read my email and copy/paste the form values into the html. Only like two people ever signed my guest book, but I still thought I was sticking it to the man. Who needs big CGI?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:54 PM on June 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
For a kid who had neither access to /cgi-bin nor any idea how to even write a CGI script, I thought this was awesome and I used it to add a guest book to my homepage. I'd read my email and copy/paste the form values into the html. Only like two people ever signed my guest book, but I still thought I was sticking it to the man. Who needs big CGI?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:54 PM on June 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
This feels a little like blaming guitars for the existence of bad music.
posted by spilon at 12:54 PM on June 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by spilon at 12:54 PM on June 9, 2022 [10 favorites]
If we're looking for Original Sins of the WWW, I have a list:
* We used advertising as the unit of currency
* In the early days we didn't put enough energy into making it easy for normal people to create their own websites; instead encouraged them to use websites to make their websites, ushering in the era of "social networks"
* Social networks
* Vendor extensions
* "Dave is unpleasant; let's invent Atom"
* The "semantic web" pipe dream
* The XML Delusion
* Obfuscated source code
* Proprietary Everything
posted by ook at 12:57 PM on June 9, 2022 [18 favorites]
* We used advertising as the unit of currency
* In the early days we didn't put enough energy into making it easy for normal people to create their own websites; instead encouraged them to use websites to make their websites, ushering in the era of "social networks"
* Social networks
* Vendor extensions
* "Dave is unpleasant; let's invent Atom"
* The "semantic web" pipe dream
* The XML Delusion
* Obfuscated source code
* Proprietary Everything
posted by ook at 12:57 PM on June 9, 2022 [18 favorites]
I feel people are taking this squib way too seriously. It's not a serious examination of the growth of ecommerce (as evidenced by the jocular introductory asides about evolution, which get that kind of wrong too). It's a mildly humorous lament about How Did It All Go So Wrong.
Enjoy it (or not, up to you).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:06 PM on June 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
Enjoy it (or not, up to you).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:06 PM on June 9, 2022 [12 favorites]
I think Paul is coming from a place where many of us greybeards are: The early web seemed like a revolutionary technology that would upend the power dynamic of the one-to-many publishing model. "Anyone" could have a website and therefore, your blog posts could reach everyone with a browser.
Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how creativity works.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:06 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how creativity works.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:06 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
XMLHttpRequest--which typically doesn't use XML and doesn't necessarily even use HTTP--seems worth mentioning here as the enabler of "Web 2.0" transactions.
MetaFilter's own jjg (#16) coined the term AJAX in this (archived) article.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:15 PM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
MetaFilter's own jjg (#16) coined the term AJAX in this (archived) article.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:15 PM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
For a ~1000 word essay - basically a light thought experiment, not a manifesto - it sure has a lot of people exercised. I rather enjoyed it.
It's quite obviously an essay in the sense that Montaigne intended. A couple paragraphs in, I realized I liked the voice at work, scrolled up to learn it was Paul Ford, and thought, well no wonder.
I confess I didn't even know a FORM tag existed before I read this. Now I do, and I get to ponder anew how something small (or big) can developed from out of a perceived need or benefit, then transform the space around it in surprising ways. Sometimes that's really good! Sometimes not. Or results are so mixed it's impossible to decide. That doesn't mean it isn't worth examining. Lots of things are like that. Guitars, for example.
The final paragraph wrapped this up pretty effectively: when we say our predecessors might have known better and tried harder, we may be correct, *and* we should also turn that lens on things we're building now.
The point here isn't that Paul Ford really thinks the FORM tag is the culprit. It's just a handy example of how adding a function - even a necessary one! - sometimes needs greater scrutiny.
My office uses a proprietary system to manage a complex process involving lots of partner orgs and tons of users. Next time we think about adding a feature that seems to solve a problem - which we'd never do on a whim as it is - I'm going to remember this essay. It worked.
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:24 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
It's quite obviously an essay in the sense that Montaigne intended. A couple paragraphs in, I realized I liked the voice at work, scrolled up to learn it was Paul Ford, and thought, well no wonder.
I confess I didn't even know a FORM tag existed before I read this. Now I do, and I get to ponder anew how something small (or big) can developed from out of a perceived need or benefit, then transform the space around it in surprising ways. Sometimes that's really good! Sometimes not. Or results are so mixed it's impossible to decide. That doesn't mean it isn't worth examining. Lots of things are like that. Guitars, for example.
The final paragraph wrapped this up pretty effectively: when we say our predecessors might have known better and tried harder, we may be correct, *and* we should also turn that lens on things we're building now.
The point here isn't that Paul Ford really thinks the FORM tag is the culprit. It's just a handy example of how adding a function - even a necessary one! - sometimes needs greater scrutiny.
My office uses a proprietary system to manage a complex process involving lots of partner orgs and tons of users. Next time we think about adding a feature that seems to solve a problem - which we'd never do on a whim as it is - I'm going to remember this essay. It worked.
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:24 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
The XML Delusion is my new favorite band or user name.
posted by Rash at 1:27 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Rash at 1:27 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
"Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain; and it is hardly possible to step aside from the pursuit of truth without falling a victim either to your stupidity or else to your vanity. Stupidity will then attach you to received opinions, and you will stick in the mud; or vanity will set you hunting for novelty, and you will find mare's-nests."
— A.E. Housman, the Application of Thought to Textual Criticism
Paul Ford isn't stupid, and he isn't uniquely vain, but it's a common kind of vanity that fuels everything from the local curmudgeon with a regular column in your hometown paper to the endless sea of posts around the web with that shareable, "huh — fresh take," energy.
It doesn't matter whether what you write is true or needs to be written. It's a natural end, when you've spent so long writing clever, niche essays for a clever, niche audience, that you'll produce rhetorical exercises of a certain pleasing shape and just the right length to pull in your regular freelance fee.
posted by denmch at 1:35 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
— A.E. Housman, the Application of Thought to Textual Criticism
Paul Ford isn't stupid, and he isn't uniquely vain, but it's a common kind of vanity that fuels everything from the local curmudgeon with a regular column in your hometown paper to the endless sea of posts around the web with that shareable, "huh — fresh take," energy.
It doesn't matter whether what you write is true or needs to be written. It's a natural end, when you've spent so long writing clever, niche essays for a clever, niche audience, that you'll produce rhetorical exercises of a certain pleasing shape and just the right length to pull in your regular freelance fee.
posted by denmch at 1:35 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'd go even earlier than the form tag, and say that when we started using endorphins everything went off the rails.
Think about it: That endorphin rush is what caused the form tag itself, brought about by the need to do things like putting content online and subsequently commenting about how stupid the content someone else put online is.
posted by Ickster at 1:44 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Think about it: That endorphin rush is what caused the form tag itself, brought about by the need to do things like putting content online and subsequently commenting about how stupid the content someone else put online is.
posted by Ickster at 1:44 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
there are so many other better nexus points: the 1996 telecom act, the legal framework for commercial use online, the fatalistic selling off of proto internet public backbones to huge telecoms for next to nothing, etc etc
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 1:45 PM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 1:45 PM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I didn't see Usenet mentioned in the article, but I don't see it mentioned here either. Oh well.
posted by mhoye at 1:46 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 1:46 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
"Old Man Yells At The Cloud"
posted by AlSweigart at 1:47 PM on June 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by AlSweigart at 1:47 PM on June 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
On the other hand, there's probably an even stupider timeline where Hotline and Pointcast really took off and supplanted the web. At least we're not in that one.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:57 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:57 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The more I read about Paul Ford the more he seems to be just another self promoting hustler who offers little of substance or value to the world beyond his own PR factory. The problem with the internet isn’t the form tag, it is the enablement of an influencer class and their hot takes of nonsense designed elicit page views for profit via emotional manipulation. We have somehow gotten to the point where we spend more time reflecting on the sound and fury of morons than the pursuit of real knowledge and wisdom.
posted by interogative mood at 2:11 PM on June 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 2:11 PM on June 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
pursuit of truth without falling a victim either to your stupidity or else to your vanity.
Yes!
"The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.
“Master thyself, then others shall thee beare”
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst’ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity"
-Pound, Canto LXXXI.
posted by clavdivs at 2:11 PM on June 9, 2022
Yes!
"The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.
“Master thyself, then others shall thee beare”
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst’ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity"
-Pound, Canto LXXXI.
posted by clavdivs at 2:11 PM on June 9, 2022
Yes, it's a silly article, but no sillier than the frequent bemoaning that "the Internet was a mistake" that regularly gets trotted out on MetaFilter and elsewhere.
Thing is, the '90s and early '00s web really did feel revolutionary, because it was. Yes, we can all agree that the design aesthetic that was facilitated by Geocities was atrocious, but there really was this incredible flourishing of self-publishing creativity that came with it, with people pouring their souls into creating detailed sites for outrageously niche subjects. It was like the 'zine culture that came before, but with a potential audience of thousands or millions. And while Geocities and the like provided a place for mostly young people to "get your own website," a similar spirit of niche creativity inspired people with more sophisticated skillsets and/or more disposable income to create a huge variety of single-serving websites (YTMND, anyone?), self-published outlets for artists and humorists (like Brunching Shuttlecocks), eclectic collections of interesting things produced by interesting people (zompist.com, happily still going strong), new forms of humor responding to the content facilitated by the new medium (Real Ultimate Power), and places where you could do anything (Zombo.com).
And throughout all of this, the form tag existed, and was used. People had guestbooks on their Geocities pages, they created Which Pokemon Are You quizzes, they let you calculate your Geek Code. But the form tag in this piece doesn't really mean the form tag, literally. It's a metonymy for interactivity. And while the first decade and a half of the web did have interactivity, it certainly was quantitatively and qualitatively different from what we expect now. And I'd say the main differences are speed and accessibility. Speed, in that one of the main ways of reacting and interacting in the early web was by posting material on your own website responding to someone else's site. And accessibility, in that access to resources like Geocities or independent web hosting was practically limited to people with the time to learn how to use it (first, learn how to edit a text file, then learn HTML, then learn how to create an account, then learn how to upload your files...), which largely meant middle-class young people. The rise of Web 2.0 and browser-based content creation and manipulation dramatically lowered the barrier for entry in terms of time and skill, which made the web much more accessible to a much broader population than it had been before.
The folks who grew up with the Internet in the pre-WWW era used to bemoan the "eternal September," when suddenly the online spaces that had been comparatively private clubs for a relatively homogeneous population of students, academics, and technology enthusiasts became accessible to a much broader population, who didn't know or necessarily care about the culture and rules that had developed in that space before their arrival. I think some of the sighing about the more interactive web that followed the 90's and early 00's is another version of the eternal September. Which I get, honestly: I miss the optimism and creativity of the early web. Increasingly, Zombo.com feels less like a satire of the overenthusiasm of the dot-com boom and more like a wistful reminiscence of an era when it really did feel like anything might be possible, if not at Zombo.com then at the next link on your webring. At the same time, there are voices that have been elevated on Tumblr and Twitter and elsewhere that were awfully hard to find on the 90's web, and that's led to real and meaningful cultural change (and yes, rightwing pushback) over the past two decades.
If we're looking for a metonymy for what's gone wrong with the modern web, I think a much better choice than the form tag is the algorithm, and in particular algorithmic capitalism. During the '90s, we turned over ownership of the Internet from the academics and government agencies who built it to capitalists, who had to find a way to make it profitable. And they have, by advertising and manipulation and just blind amplification of humanity's worst impulses. The Internet was a great idea, we've just kind of fucked it by giving it to Capital. I still think we could take it back.
posted by biogeo at 2:13 PM on June 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
Thing is, the '90s and early '00s web really did feel revolutionary, because it was. Yes, we can all agree that the design aesthetic that was facilitated by Geocities was atrocious, but there really was this incredible flourishing of self-publishing creativity that came with it, with people pouring their souls into creating detailed sites for outrageously niche subjects. It was like the 'zine culture that came before, but with a potential audience of thousands or millions. And while Geocities and the like provided a place for mostly young people to "get your own website," a similar spirit of niche creativity inspired people with more sophisticated skillsets and/or more disposable income to create a huge variety of single-serving websites (YTMND, anyone?), self-published outlets for artists and humorists (like Brunching Shuttlecocks), eclectic collections of interesting things produced by interesting people (zompist.com, happily still going strong), new forms of humor responding to the content facilitated by the new medium (Real Ultimate Power), and places where you could do anything (Zombo.com).
And throughout all of this, the form tag existed, and was used. People had guestbooks on their Geocities pages, they created Which Pokemon Are You quizzes, they let you calculate your Geek Code. But the form tag in this piece doesn't really mean the form tag, literally. It's a metonymy for interactivity. And while the first decade and a half of the web did have interactivity, it certainly was quantitatively and qualitatively different from what we expect now. And I'd say the main differences are speed and accessibility. Speed, in that one of the main ways of reacting and interacting in the early web was by posting material on your own website responding to someone else's site. And accessibility, in that access to resources like Geocities or independent web hosting was practically limited to people with the time to learn how to use it (first, learn how to edit a text file, then learn HTML, then learn how to create an account, then learn how to upload your files...), which largely meant middle-class young people. The rise of Web 2.0 and browser-based content creation and manipulation dramatically lowered the barrier for entry in terms of time and skill, which made the web much more accessible to a much broader population than it had been before.
The folks who grew up with the Internet in the pre-WWW era used to bemoan the "eternal September," when suddenly the online spaces that had been comparatively private clubs for a relatively homogeneous population of students, academics, and technology enthusiasts became accessible to a much broader population, who didn't know or necessarily care about the culture and rules that had developed in that space before their arrival. I think some of the sighing about the more interactive web that followed the 90's and early 00's is another version of the eternal September. Which I get, honestly: I miss the optimism and creativity of the early web. Increasingly, Zombo.com feels less like a satire of the overenthusiasm of the dot-com boom and more like a wistful reminiscence of an era when it really did feel like anything might be possible, if not at Zombo.com then at the next link on your webring. At the same time, there are voices that have been elevated on Tumblr and Twitter and elsewhere that were awfully hard to find on the 90's web, and that's led to real and meaningful cultural change (and yes, rightwing pushback) over the past two decades.
If we're looking for a metonymy for what's gone wrong with the modern web, I think a much better choice than the form tag is the algorithm, and in particular algorithmic capitalism. During the '90s, we turned over ownership of the Internet from the academics and government agencies who built it to capitalists, who had to find a way to make it profitable. And they have, by advertising and manipulation and just blind amplification of humanity's worst impulses. The Internet was a great idea, we've just kind of fucked it by giving it to Capital. I still think we could take it back.
posted by biogeo at 2:13 PM on June 9, 2022 [20 favorites]
n is the internet itself. even though it pays my mortgage, i think we would be better off without it. you can still have databases, computer aided design and digital art and so on, just no internet.
Everyone who was forced to navigate a menu driven phone tree to request technical support via fax back just shuddered right out of their chairs at the thought of reverting back because there wasn't an internet anymore.
posted by Mitheral at 2:28 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Everyone who was forced to navigate a menu driven phone tree to request technical support via fax back just shuddered right out of their chairs at the thought of reverting back because there wasn't an internet anymore.
posted by Mitheral at 2:28 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
> Yes, it's a silly article, but no sillier than the frequent bemoaning that "the Internet was a mistake" that regularly gets trotted out on MetaFilter and elsewhere.
Yes, but the essay is much longer than "the internet was a mistake."
posted by AlSweigart at 2:44 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yes, but the essay is much longer than "the internet was a mistake."
posted by AlSweigart at 2:44 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
as the joke goes, we never should have taught sand to do math
posted by glonous keming at 2:55 PM on June 9, 2022
posted by glonous keming at 2:55 PM on June 9, 2022
> If only the terminator could destroy language.
Plo chops.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 3:33 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Plo chops.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 3:33 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Jesus, Wired published that. Was Heather Havrilesky not available?
>It is easy to look back and say: “They should have known what they were unleashing.” But no one ever knows what they’re unleashing.
Bullshit, I chose not to get involved. Cory Doctorow and the EFF knew what others were unleashing. You didn't listen. They told you and then you did it anyway either for greed or you had to find out for yourself.
>What is valuable, though, is to look back and think: What could we have done to change the outcome? Could we have created a element that made it easier for small local manufacturers to sell online instead of Amazon rolling everyone up? How would that have worked? A text box that had some kind of privacy control built in, so that all our passwords wouldn’t leak?
The excuse was racing to market, to be a broker of services taking a cut with economies of scale enabling wafer-thin margins of sticky network-effect hold on users. The dumping attacks from people who could stay in the market longer than newcomers was why they wanted to be the incumbent player pwning of the market already. Yahoo groups, myspace, bebo, friendster are all corpses posing a challenge to this thought -- why didn't AOL become the apex social network?
The www was about the ideas, mimicking the Memex, forjumping from one to the next, and the native NeXT www-browser had a page editor built in. The markup is only the smallest bit about display. Building shopfronts and brochures required better tech (TeX!) and people with better multimedia skill than the stuff in page goiters like Flash Shockwave or Director.
With hindsight, you could have done micropaymemts for zine pages and sustained independent journalism -- for examining ideas -- in small communities of specialists. You could have created a federated messaging space that avoids the spam of wide-open email (they did 15 years later with FediVerse-type microblogging).
CSS, why couldn't you terminate CSS?!?
posted by k3ninho at 3:44 PM on June 9, 2022
>It is easy to look back and say: “They should have known what they were unleashing.” But no one ever knows what they’re unleashing.
Bullshit, I chose not to get involved. Cory Doctorow and the EFF knew what others were unleashing. You didn't listen. They told you and then you did it anyway either for greed or you had to find out for yourself.
>What is valuable, though, is to look back and think: What could we have done to change the outcome? Could we have created a element that made it easier for small local manufacturers to sell online instead of Amazon rolling everyone up? How would that have worked? A text box that had some kind of privacy control built in, so that all our passwords wouldn’t leak?
The excuse was racing to market, to be a broker of services taking a cut with economies of scale enabling wafer-thin margins of sticky network-effect hold on users. The dumping attacks from people who could stay in the market longer than newcomers was why they wanted to be the incumbent player pwning of the market already. Yahoo groups, myspace, bebo, friendster are all corpses posing a challenge to this thought -- why didn't AOL become the apex social network?
The www was about the ideas, mimicking the Memex, forjumping from one to the next, and the native NeXT www-browser had a page editor built in. The markup is only the smallest bit about display. Building shopfronts and brochures required better tech (TeX!) and people with better multimedia skill than the stuff in page goiters like Flash Shockwave or Director.
With hindsight, you could have done micropaymemts for zine pages and sustained independent journalism -- for examining ideas -- in small communities of specialists. You could have created a federated messaging space that avoids the spam of wide-open email (they did 15 years later with FediVerse-type microblogging).
CSS, why couldn't you terminate CSS?!?
posted by k3ninho at 3:44 PM on June 9, 2022
The Form Element? What about the Fifth Element?
posted by kirkaracha at 5:34 PM on June 9, 2022
posted by kirkaracha at 5:34 PM on June 9, 2022
We were excited about the internet because we saw it as a place where you could connect with other nerds about your niche hobby. What we did not predict was that other peoples’ niche hobby would be white supremacy.
posted by panama joe at 6:37 PM on June 9, 2022 [29 favorites]
posted by panama joe at 6:37 PM on June 9, 2022 [29 favorites]
I think a lot of the discussion here misses the point of the article? It's not a rant about how the web should be read-only.
"What is valuable, though, is to look back and think: What could we have done to change the outcome? Could we have created a element that made it easier for small local manufacturers to sell online instead of Amazon rolling everyone up? How would that have worked? A text box that had some kind of privacy control built in, so that all our passwords wouldn’t leak? A drop-down that worked reliably on mobile? Why didn’t we do those things? What aren’t we doing now?"
API design is important, and the choices made regarding what features to provide (and the range of inputs/outputs/etc) have a real impact on what products are created with them. Making it easier to build something makes it more likely that thing will be built.
posted by ethand at 6:54 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
"What is valuable, though, is to look back and think: What could we have done to change the outcome? Could we have created a element that made it easier for small local manufacturers to sell online instead of Amazon rolling everyone up? How would that have worked? A text box that had some kind of privacy control built in, so that all our passwords wouldn’t leak? A drop-down that worked reliably on mobile? Why didn’t we do those things? What aren’t we doing now?"
API design is important, and the choices made regarding what features to provide (and the range of inputs/outputs/etc) have a real impact on what products are created with them. Making it easier to build something makes it more likely that thing will be built.
posted by ethand at 6:54 PM on June 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I’m disappointed that the article doesn’t dig into why and where the form tag was first created. At that time of the web’s development, surely the specification of it came after it was already shipped in some browser.
posted by jimw at 7:35 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by jimw at 7:35 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
The more I read about Paul Ford the more he seems to be just another self promoting hustler who offers little of substance or value to the world beyond his own PR factory
This thread has kind of confused me with its vitriol, but now I understand that today is Opposite Day and it all makes sense. So.. yeah, Paul Ford has clearly been writing vapid PR pieces and creating worthless clickbaity websites for decades and would never bother to join an online community and instead only build scammy social networks for bitcoins. For shame, Paul Ford, for shame!
posted by gwint at 8:19 PM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
This thread has kind of confused me with its vitriol, but now I understand that today is Opposite Day and it all makes sense. So.. yeah, Paul Ford has clearly been writing vapid PR pieces and creating worthless clickbaity websites for decades and would never bother to join an online community and instead only build scammy social networks for bitcoins. For shame, Paul Ford, for shame!
posted by gwint at 8:19 PM on June 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I’m disappointed that the article doesn’t dig into why and where the form tag was first created.
Tim Berners-Lee vs TPS reports.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:29 PM on June 9, 2022
Tim Berners-Lee vs TPS reports.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:29 PM on June 9, 2022
The problem isn't form element, it's the monopolies/duopolies that strangle the web today.
In 2001 Microsoft was forced to give up its browser monopoly. Many fun, educational and generally nice things came out of that. But that was that. The oligopoly that grew out of and destroyed the world wide web was allowed to flourish. Google and Apple and Facebook and Amazon have absolute control of where most people use the internet: on Android and iOS, in Chrome and on the Facebooks. They smash even the tiniest competitors whether they're community driven or for-profit tech companies. They observe our every move, every purchase, every click. They use that power to warp what we see and where we go and what we read and what we build.
It's not the form element that does that. We're not helpless against the power of those companies — if we want, we can separate Google Maps and Gmail and Chrome and Android and YouTube from Google Ads. We could make Apple open up their app store into a real marketplace. But at the moment we don't do that. So we have what we have: a sick www.
posted by UN at 10:42 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
In 2001 Microsoft was forced to give up its browser monopoly. Many fun, educational and generally nice things came out of that. But that was that. The oligopoly that grew out of and destroyed the world wide web was allowed to flourish. Google and Apple and Facebook and Amazon have absolute control of where most people use the internet: on Android and iOS, in Chrome and on the Facebooks. They smash even the tiniest competitors whether they're community driven or for-profit tech companies. They observe our every move, every purchase, every click. They use that power to warp what we see and where we go and what we read and what we build.
It's not the form element that does that. We're not helpless against the power of those companies — if we want, we can separate Google Maps and Gmail and Chrome and Android and YouTube from Google Ads. We could make Apple open up their app store into a real marketplace. But at the moment we don't do that. So we have what we have: a sick www.
posted by UN at 10:42 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
join an online community
guessing that was supposed to link this?
posted by atoxyl at 10:52 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
guessing that was supposed to link this?
posted by atoxyl at 10:52 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
With hindsight, you could have done micropaymemts for zine pages and sustained independent journalism
Thinking this would have worked had somebody done the technology right at the right time also feels a bit Engineer’s Disease.
posted by atoxyl at 10:53 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Thinking this would have worked had somebody done the technology right at the right time also feels a bit Engineer’s Disease.
posted by atoxyl at 10:53 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
atoxyl -- I wrote it because it's among my hindsight items: ITT we're bemoaning the <form> element for the wide range of user input it allowed online, including social-media-filter-bubbles and advertising-driven misinformation scams. How-we-come-to-believe-true-what-we-believe-true and the Overton Window matter in this discussion -- and monetising highly-reputed sources answering only to their readers rather than advertisers is something I still want today. I mean, Substack and Patreon seem to do OK.
Ofc the grift will challenge this, and applying a technical fix to a social problem isn't a cure-all.
posted by k3ninho at 11:46 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ofc the grift will challenge this, and applying a technical fix to a social problem isn't a cure-all.
posted by k3ninho at 11:46 PM on June 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The reason it seems weird to criticize the < form > element is because the < form > element doesn't really do anything novel. HMTL uses a < form > element is because forms already existed. Everything from birth certificates to job applications to LL Bean catalog orders had paper forms where you'd write your name, address, etc. in specially designated spaces. Even credit cards had paper forms - I worked for a place well into the 2000s where we'd write your card number and expiration date on a piece of carbon paper (the second piece of paper was the receipt), because credit card readers need a phone line and until the mid-2000s there were still places in major cities (e.g., parks) where it was prohibitive to install phone lines. Hell, one of the input types for HTML forms is called a radio button. I've been writing HTML for nearly a quarter of a century, and still had to have that explained to me when I started because the reference was so far before my time. HTML wasn't creating anything new, any more than the < p > tag created the concept of paragraphs. And HTML couldn't just exclude forms, any more than it could exclude paragraphs. It's how people communicate.
But also, web forms are pretty useless without a database to store the submitted information. Without the database, they're just Polaroid pictures. Databases are probably the real inflection point. But also, databases are kind of necessary for modern life. We had databases before we had HTML forms, and I'm pretty glad we did, for the most part. It's nice to be able to know what medications are contraindicated when your doctor writes you a prescription without just relying on your doctor's memory. The PDR is still a database even if it's bound in book form.
The real question is, what would they/we have done without forms? To write even a basic comment like this, I'd have to write my own HTML file and host on my own server, with no way of informing either Paul Ford or gestalt saloon that I had a reaction.* You can't say this without admitting that a < form > - less HTML would be even less useful than the internet was in the late 80s. For the "the internet is bad" people (of whom I may be one), maybe that's not the worst thing, but it's a pretty scorching take. It's not far from an neo-Amish "let's just not use electricity" take. I am at least willing to acknowledge the heat of my takes.
Glad it was posted, though. Good discussion starter.
* Maybe I could write an email, but um, web-based mail is just an HTML form, and the reason is because non-web-based email is a form, too, just not an HTML one. I guess I'd have to send them a letter. But not a postcard, because that has spaces for the address that look quite a bit like forms. And actually, the USPS rules for envelopes are pretty form-like too. Hmm...
posted by kevinbelt at 9:57 AM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
But also, web forms are pretty useless without a database to store the submitted information. Without the database, they're just Polaroid pictures. Databases are probably the real inflection point. But also, databases are kind of necessary for modern life. We had databases before we had HTML forms, and I'm pretty glad we did, for the most part. It's nice to be able to know what medications are contraindicated when your doctor writes you a prescription without just relying on your doctor's memory. The PDR is still a database even if it's bound in book form.
The real question is, what would they/we have done without forms? To write even a basic comment like this, I'd have to write my own HTML file and host on my own server, with no way of informing either Paul Ford or gestalt saloon that I had a reaction.* You can't say this without admitting that a < form > - less HTML would be even less useful than the internet was in the late 80s. For the "the internet is bad" people (of whom I may be one), maybe that's not the worst thing, but it's a pretty scorching take. It's not far from an neo-Amish "let's just not use electricity" take. I am at least willing to acknowledge the heat of my takes.
Glad it was posted, though. Good discussion starter.
* Maybe I could write an email, but um, web-based mail is just an HTML form, and the reason is because non-web-based email is a form, too, just not an HTML one. I guess I'd have to send them a letter. But not a postcard, because that has spaces for the address that look quite a bit like forms. And actually, the USPS rules for envelopes are pretty form-like too. Hmm...
posted by kevinbelt at 9:57 AM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
Thinking this would have worked had somebody done the technology right at the right time also feels a bit Engineer’s Disease.
Japan had micropayments on flipphones in the early 2000s, it was built to support US markets a bit later but it just never caught on in the US. It's barely catching on now....
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:24 AM on June 10, 2022
Japan had micropayments on flipphones in the early 2000s, it was built to support US markets a bit later but it just never caught on in the US. It's barely catching on now....
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:24 AM on June 10, 2022
and monetising highly-reputed sources answering only to their readers rather than advertisers is something I still want today. I mean, Substack and Patreon seem to do OK.
I was being a little glib there, I actually like a lot of things about micropayments over subscriptions in theory (I recall discussing this at length on MeFi at some point). It has the potential to break the way the web is supposed to work - you clicks the link, you sees the page - less than subscriptions do. But it also has the potential to break it more - I do not think, fundamentally, that people want to make a purchasing decision every time they click a link. So I don’t think it’s likely to work without sorting out a lot of social and UX factors to provide a seamless and standardized experience between content providers.
I’m also not sure that paywalling the real, quality content can ever be a solution to misinformation and scams.
posted by atoxyl at 12:30 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was being a little glib there, I actually like a lot of things about micropayments over subscriptions in theory (I recall discussing this at length on MeFi at some point). It has the potential to break the way the web is supposed to work - you clicks the link, you sees the page - less than subscriptions do. But it also has the potential to break it more - I do not think, fundamentally, that people want to make a purchasing decision every time they click a link. So I don’t think it’s likely to work without sorting out a lot of social and UX factors to provide a seamless and standardized experience between content providers.
I’m also not sure that paywalling the real, quality content can ever be a solution to misinformation and scams.
posted by atoxyl at 12:30 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by Candleman at 11:21 AM on June 9, 2022 [22 favorites]