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SilentCal comments on The Web Browser is Not Your Client (But You Don't Need To Know That) - Less Wrong
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Comments (47)
Epistemic status: devil's advocate
The web browser is your client, because the display is the content.
Why did web forums, rather than closed NNTP networks, become the successor to Usenet? One possibility is that the new internet users weren't savvy enough to install a program without having CDs of it stacked on every available public surface. But another is that web sites, able to provide a look and feel appropriate to their community, plainly outcompeted networks of plaintext content. The advantages aren't necessarily just aesthetic; UI 'nudges' might guide users to pay attention to the same things at the same times, allowing a more coordinated and potentially more tailored set of discussion norms.
Notice that on mobile, users have rejected the dominance of the browser--in favor of less standardization and interoperability, via native apps that dispense with HTML.
Put another way, a web community does have a comparative advantage at designing a UI for itself, because UIs are not interchangeable.
Ah, yes, porn as the engine of technology.
The web had pictures, "networks of plaintext content" did not. Case closed.
Objection: I'm pretty sure Usenet had a colossal amount of porn, at least by the standards of the day. Maybe even still the case. I know its most common use today is for binaries, and I assume that most of that is porn.
Of course it had. But, compared to the web, it was (1) less convenient to get; and (2) separated from the textual content. Think about the difference between a web page and a set of files sitting in a directory.
I'm not sure I'm getting out of that comparison what you meant to put into it. I find the set of files in a directory a heck of a lot more convenient.