Thursday, May 14, 2015; 8:55:51 AM Eastern
Deprecating HTTP
- This is for all the people who say there is no tech journalism that covers real tech issues, as opposed to reviewing the latest gadget from Apple. If there were such a tech press (and there isn't) they would be all over this idea of deprecating HTTP.
- Understanding this is something anyone with a high school education can do. It's no more difficult than grammar or world history. You might have to read a sentence twice, or look something up, but if you have even a modest education, you can understand this.
- 1. HTTP is a protocol. It describes a way for two pieces of software to communicate with each other. The software could be running on the same machine, or on machines on opposite sides of the world.
- 2. HTTP was created by Tim Berners-Lee at the same time he created HTML, which is a file format.
- 3. The two things, put together, form what we call The Web.
- 4. Both are remarkably simple, that's the magic. Everything that came before that tried to solve these problems was complicated. Because the designers saw the problem as larger than it actually was, or they brought along ulterior motives, by making it complex they expected to retain control of the flow it created.
- 5. The simple format is always the open format. The complex format tends to be proprietary.
- 6. HTML plus HTTP spawned a new industry. Out of that industry today's tech giants grew. Google, Facebook, Amazon. And the old tech giants adapted, or they went away.
- 7. I loved HTML plus HTTP because it meant that I could put up a server without getting permission from anyone. Up to that point, if you wanted to make something that anyone could access from anywhere, you had to work for a big company. And they never would hire a person like me to speak on their platforms. I might say something like what Bill Simmons said about the NFL commissioner. ;-)
- 8. Corporate-land is basically an agreement among people to get rich and not tell the truth. The two things are related. If you told the truth the money wouldn't be there. And if you make a lot of money you want to hide the truth about how you're making it. Nothing wrong with that! It's one of the opposing forces.
- 9. The other opposing force is journalism. Sources having the guts to tell the truth, forgoing big financial rewards, in the cause of building something that's truthful.
- 10. In tech there's a huge tension between money and truth, because our products are made out of the truth. I like to say: "You can't lie to a compiler." That means what you tell the computer to do, it will do, exactly as you said. It doesn't understand winks and nudges. So if you want something to happen in tech, ultimately, someone is telling the truth.
- 11. Mozilla says they want to "deprecate" HTTP. They throw up a lot of smoke about this, it's confusing, you might think, but it's just to hide a truth. Deprecate means destroy. HTTP is how we get the ability to put up servers without asking anyone for permission to do so. In the future they contemplate, that freedom is gone.
- 12. You think The Algorithm is a slippery slope? This is a real slippery slope. I have tried to get the necessary permissions needed to run a "secure" version of my blog, and I hit dead ends. I wonder why this is. Is this, to Mozilla, a bug, or a feature? :-)
- 13. But it's not just Mozilla that wants to do this. Google really wants to do this. And Google is the scary one. Mozilla can say "deprecate" and the web just laughs. But if Google says it, then it's time to start wondering how to go underground.
- 14. I definitely won't make this transition. I'm tired of re-tooling. My content will disappear, going back to the beginning of the blogosphere. Along with it will go the sites of relatives I'm keeping online. And former blogging communities whose content I'm keeping around, because I think it's the right thing to do. And I'm just one tiny part of this wonderful thing called the web we've all been working on for over 20 years.
- 15. There's no reason connections to my blog need to be "secure," at least not at this time. Perhaps at some point, when Verizon adding cookies to track mobile users, or Comcast is inserting ads, or Google is linking from my text to their pages, all of which has happened, btw. These are the very people who want to make all our communication "secure." Secure like a hen living in a fox-guarded house.
- 16. The tech industry is not your friend, unless you're willing to tell an untruthful story and you're trying to get rich. Then perhaps they are your friend. But if you just want to write a blog post every now and then, you need to look further for the truth, because they ain't tellin it.