I both wince and smile when I see those proclamations about the web [internet] being broken. I’d like to know the field data that is based upon.
To say this confidently, someone would have to visited and explored every single corner of the web. I for one have been exploring for 2 plus decades and am barely scratching the surface.
The assertion comes however, from people who equate the entire world wide web with the experiences of the places with the most attention, social media and the ad-laden trend seeking places that once we might have called “news and media”.
Once again, its a focus on just what happens at the Big Mall of Internetica rather then the real neighborhoods, homes, bodegas of individuals. I’m not here to tell you where to find the web that was, but my gut says there is much more to it than is given credit. I only have my limited experiences which I can only extrapolate a wee bit.
Here’s three snippets.
The Web is Precious Small Gardens
I humbly submit Starbonnets Garden a joyful hand crafted web site by “Fran” with almost a waft of Geocities era places, the gently squiggly an image gif flowers in the back, playful pastel bright colors.
You’d have to be a cold web snob to sneer at this site.
Hello! My name is Fran! I’m the webmaster of starbonnets.garden: the place I use
https://starbonnets.garden/
to express myself to my fullest content!
Thanks for checking me out ^_^
The last update includes an apology for slowing done because they had to do finals. But look, there is even a free to use section with media shared under a Creative Commons license.
And really, I did not go down every link in Starbonnets garden, but let’s celebrate one person just building their own corner on the web, not crufted with ads or pop ups or clamoring about React. It’s just them.
And this is just the tip of the web berg of sites shared by Joe Bennet as iwebthings itself just a tip of countless more small web type sites that do this curation.
Can all of this be lumped under the banner of the web / internet bring broken?
They Still Ask Photo Reuse Permission Although The License Says They Do Not Have To
Much of my joy and reward online has been hearing from people who found some use for the 70k+ photos I have shared in flickr under mostly CC0- where I can I track them in an album where this has happened at least 340 times.
I will be repeating my own repetition of this annecdote from way back when I started getting messages in flickr mail asking permission to reuse photos. I would reply with a thanks, and then put on my “know it all hat: and license-splain that the Creative Commons license meant they could use them for any purpose as long as they provided an attribution.
This reponse changed completely when someone rightfully replied, put me in my place saying, “Yes I know the details of Creative Commons licenses, but I just thought you would like to know.”
The times this happens wanes and then wanes more, but just recently I got two similar ones, the first:
I am a photo researcher for Portage & Main Press, a Canadian publisher of educational resources. We’d like to make use of your image, entitled “Oh Yeah, The iThing That You Cannot Open“, which was found at this link www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/7370292704 under CC BY 2.0 licence.
We wish to include your image as part of an image bank to be used by teachers to supplement our teacher and student resource book Hands-On Science and Technology Ontario: Grade 6 ISBN 9781774920718.
The book will be published in Canada in March 2026, available by print on demand. The book will be approximately 300 pages long and available in print, and possibly digital, format.
The image bank will be provided as a password-protected download for teachers, and the image will also be printed in the back of the book along with attribution information.
Credit in the book would be given for your image as follows:
Oh Yeah, The iThing That You Cannot Open by Alan Levine. Used under CC BY 2.0 licence.
Again, by the rules of the licenses, they did not even need to ask. But they did. And I do like to know (and of course I said yes). The best part was the second email, asking about another photo of mine shared into the public domain (CC0), where the rep said:
Even though this image is in the Public Domain, we’d still like to confirm permission to use this image as an act of courtesy.
An “act of courtesy”, how about that for a broken web? An act that is not required, yet still is done.
This internet is totally broken, right?
The Temple-Stuart Furniture Fans Keep Finding Me
They won’t leave me alone! There are legions of people who own what as been written up as vintage “American Brown Furniture” which has all the allure of … well I cannot even reach an analogy. Maybe one of the most unexpected outcomes and most commented on posts here (not much of a record to top) that started from curiosity when I happened to see some stencil numbers and a company name on the bottom of my deceased brother’s old rocking chair.
From 2017 and still active, the replies include people who own or are looking for Temple-Stuart Furniture and even the grandson of the man who founded the company, someone else who lives in their old home, and today, 8 years later, someone else who owns the same exact chair. The chair I am looking at now, having moved from my childhood home in Baltimore, to place my parents retired to in Florida, to riding home in the back of my truck to Arizona, and then shipped to my current home in Saskatchewan, Canada.
This chair.
And because of this, I was back at the web search machine (which again is claimed to be broken, why does it still work for me? Do I have an old model?). I found this amazing video tour of the abandoned Temple-Stuart site in Baldwinville, MA that really fills in the history.
Maybe Your Web is Broken But Mine is OK
I have yet to see enough of the web to declare it dead. The web that was very much still is and I am still not wondering about the loss of wonder…
… but if you are, I am a bit sad.
My advice is to step out of the scrolling malls of social media, and go out there and explore. You see there are these things called “hyperlinks” and they can lead you to … well you have to look yourself.
Featured Image: I rummaged my own flickr photos of ones with “Web” in them, and this one wa smaybe my third choice. but I liked the full radiating shape of it, the wonder of what building is in the background. But what made it my choice was seeing in detail, at the base of the web (get it) some solid metal links. Web flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY 2.0) license
