From cf1ed19a8c0b6afa1751eb354ef7a71e4a72916d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Carson Gross Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2023 10:22:49 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] add another stat --- www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md | 88 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 88 insertions(+) create mode 100644 www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md diff --git a/www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md b/www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..fd5759344 --- /dev/null +++ b/www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md @@ -0,0 +1,88 @@ ++++ +title = "Digital Enclosure & Right-Click-View-Source Extremism" +date = 2023-04-06 +updated = 2023-04-06 +[taxonomies] +author = ["Carson Gross"] ++++ + +> Not for nothing, Hypercard presaged the web's critical "#ViewSource" affordance, which allowed people to copy, +> modify, customize and improve on the things that they found delightful or useful. This affordance was later adapted +> by other human-centered projects like #Scratch, and is a powerful tonic against #enshittification. +> +> \-\-[Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr](https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1701934607732810208) + +A driving idea behind projects like [htmx](/) and [hyperscript](https://hyperscript.org) is the idea that the "code" +for a thing should be "on" the thing. This is in part driven by a preference for [Locality of Behavior](@essays/locality_of_behavior.md), +a technical design decision which helps ease the maintenance of software. + +But another major driver is the conviction that, on the web, people should be able to view the source of a page and see +what the page is doing, the #ViewSource affordance Cory mentions above. + +## Free Software vs. Open Culture + +This later factor isn't a technical design consideration, rather, it is a moral position, or, as we will see, more of +a cultural position. + +The idea that you should be able to view the source of a web page is in the spirit of +[the Free Software Foundation's notion of free software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html): + +> “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the +> freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software." + +However, there are some important distinctions between the #ViewSource affordance of the web and the FSF's definition of +free software above. + +Web applications have always been an uncomfortable fit for this stricter definition of free for technical reasons: +the server for a web application is typically remote and, at a fundamental level, the operations occurring on the server +are opaque to the hypermedia client (i.e. the browser). + +The client deals only with hypermedia representations provided by the server, and has no visibility into the actual +source of the code executing on the server side. + +There are, of course, open source web applications, but running an open source web application is typically much less +convenient than other types of applications due to the operational complexity that they often entail. + +### Right-Click-View-Source As Culture + +However, despite this less pure adherence to the idea of free software, the early web none-the-less had radically +_open_ culture, in some practical ways a _more_ open culture than even that achieved by the free software movement. + +The #ViewSource affordance available in browsers allowed people to understand and "own" the web in a way that even most +FSF-conforming applications could not: you had direct access to the "source" of the application available, _within_ +the application itself. + +You could copy-and-paste (or save) that "source" (HTML, JavaScript & CSS) and start modifying it, without a complicated +build tool chain or, indeed, without any tool chain at all. This radical openness of the web allowed many people, often +not formally trained computer scientists, to learn how to create web pages and applications in an ad hoc and informal way. + +In strict free software terms, this was, of course, a compromise: as a user of a web application, you had no visibility +into how a server was constructing a given hypermedia response. + +But you could see _what_ the server was responding with: you could download and tweak it, poke and prod at it. You could, +if you were an advanced user, use browser tools to modify the application in place. And, most importantly, you could +_learn from it_, even if you couldn't see how the HTML was being produced. + +## Digital Enclosure & Right-Click-View-Source Extremism + +The [Enclosure Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure) was a period in English history when what were +previously [commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons) were privatized. This was a traumatic event in English +history, as evidenced by this poem by an 18th century anon: + + +> The law locks up the man or woman +> Who steals the goose from off the common, +> But lets the greater felon loose +> Who steals the common from the goose. +> +> 18th century anon + +In the last decade, the web has gone through a period of digital enclosure, where ["Walled Gardens"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform), +such as Facebook & Twitter, have replaced the earlier, more chaotic blogs and internet forums. + +Many developers have decried this trend, and rightly, in our opinion. But, despite recognizing the danger of an increasingly +closed internet, many web developers don't consider their own technical decisions and how those also influence the +culture of openness that is rapidly disappearing. + +### Two Wordle Implementations +