Comment by AuthAuth
13 hours ago
As a younger person I always see these discussions and I want an alternative to the modern web. But reading this I cant help but think "why are people so focused on building a web with none of the useful features". What use is any of this without a realtime component.
...because a lot of us remember a web that was very useful already, without needing a realtime component? We did the realtime stuff over other protocols; the web was literally just a web of static hypertext documents.
In fact, even search engines were originally optional; various people and organizations used to simply maintain huge static directory service websites, simply listing out "everything else on the web" (or more often, just the parts the author thinks are cool.)
That would be irc.
Also, the Unix “talk” command is a nice 1-to-1 chat protocol along the lines of finger, ie
$ talk snoopy@dog.house