Independent web #

The independent web (small web, indie web) is what the internet could have been: people sharing ideas and content, unowned and unhindered by the grubby hands of corporations. It consists mostly of personal websites and niche communities, and provides the true experience of connection across distance through commonality.

Digital gardens are part of the independent web, as are some of my favourite personal websites. I see this as a valuable and interesting countermovement to the 2010s social media boom, which dramatically transformed the mainstream internet into a cesspool of clickbait and advertising.

  • Ben Hoyt on why the small web is beautiful.
  • A more philosophical article on how commercial interests defined the modern web, and how different it all could have turned out. There’s some optimism here about how maybe it could change again in the future, but I don’t really buy it.
  • A great tribute to “Prof Dr” style, a spartan web design paradigm common on the personal webpages of professors of mathematics and physics.
  • An article on rewilding the internet.
  • A really great piece on the way social media messes with our brains.