The Web Was Made For Surfing Not Scrolling

I got my first computer when my sister and I pooled our money and bought a used Intel 286 from a family friend. That machine didn’t even have Windows. It had DOS, and I loved it. I felt like a spy navigating the command prompt interface to pay the games our parents let us get. Evey keystroke felt like a new discovery.

Then, the web came and gave me something new to discover. The first time I experienced the internet, it was through the walled garden of AOL. Despite its walls, AOL gave me enough of a taste of the web to know I wanted more. Webpages were an incredible look into the people who created them. Back then, there were corporate website, but mostly there were personal websites. There were the dancing babies and the under construction banners. There were table layouts and guest books. Hit counters and flash.

It was beautiful.

That version of the web still exists in the form of personal websites and “digital gardens.”* What’s changed is how we find them. The blogrolls of old have given way to Linktree and social media posts. Directories on the web have become as antiquated as phone directories (you know, the Yellow Pages?).

Discovery is a game we all play with robots. Code designed to surface the most clickable content has replace human curation and wandering. This, of course, has almost entirely been driven by social media. Google has played its part, but in fairness Google has also contributed to discovery of websites that otherwise would be launched into a void.

*I think the term digital garden puts walls up around the fun that personal websites are, so I don’t like using that term. It also indicates that for there to be value you have to tend to it, but in my opinion that’s simply not true. A website launched 20 years ago that entertains or informs is every bit as valuable as one that is updated frequently.

While AOL was a walled garden, social media is a different type of walled garden. It is one that walls off the rest of the web and insulates its participants in a representation of what the social media company’s owners want the web to look like. In fact, many people in the world don’t even realize they are using the internet when they use social media apps like Facebook.

The interesting thing about the walls of social media is they have plenty of doors. Much like Hotel California, people can go anytime they like, but they can never leave. That’s because social media preys the addictive tendencies inherent in every human. It’s a constantly reinforcing loop of dopamine hits that keep people from exploring.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. The wandering and wonderful web of the 90s and early 2000s still exists for those that want to find it. The keys to ensuring its persistence are relatively simple.

First, we need to make sure the web is fun. Neal Agarwal is a great example the fun web. The fun web doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s personal websites and games. It’s applications and blog posts. It can be serious, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Second, we need to ensure portability. Along with the rise in social media, we’ve seen a rise in web hosting that locks people into platforms. The web is an open protocol built on top of the internet, which is another open protocol. Hosting should be open as well.

Both of those points are what drive us everyday to build Orbiter. Simplifying website hosting means we can have more fun. But beyond that, we want to support open hosting. That’s why Orbiter is built on open technologies and protocols that ensure you are never locked in. We wrote a deep dive on the technology here.

If you want a web that encourages exploration, discovery, wandering, and fun, I hope you’ll join us. Orbiter is free to start, open, and built to bring the fun and wonder back to the web.