Updated June 19th, 2023
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Small Is Beautiful (Oct, 2022): What is the Small Web and why do we need it?
Today, I want to introduce you to a concept – and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age – that I’ve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about:
I’m not sure I understand the overall goal of this project. If it’s only serving a single user, why put it online in the first place? It sounds like what they’re specifically trying to offer via kitten and domain is a portfolio site, but it feels like they’re hiding that fact behind a lot of language about how they’re taking a stand against the “big web”. I’m obviously all for federated services over centralized ones, but this just seems to wear loftier goals than what it’s actually capable of. And if it is a portfolio site, then they should have spent a lot more time talking about discoverability, the obvious issue with small independent portfolio sites whose inherent goal is to get seen by others.
I agree. I’m not a coder or web developer so I wasn’t sure if I was missing something, but it also looks to me like the point is “make it easier to host your own website on your home computer and home Internet connection.”
And most people don’t host their own websites, at home or on a hosted Amazon server or whatever, not because of big tech or how difficult it is to host, but because most people don’t have a good reason to. And I don’t see how this project changes that.