Web'ing

TL;DR -- Look at a 25-year-old blog dealing with a deep subject which is modernizing.  

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This is a little aside dealing with technology, in particular how the web was, is, and will be (including ought to be). Our last post on technology dealt with Ethics and AI and had some pointers to earlier posts (several). The main reason for that is the importance of AI and how it will impact everything (and everyone). 

A good analog is 5G which deals with communication. But one does not have to go far, and one runs into the internet of everything which deals with computing at the edge whose results will be an inundation of data which will drive us crazy (and be ignored) or will be of some use (perhaps a lot if we are smart about choices). Lots to discuss; however, we can punt this down the road, for now. 

This post will have a collection of example sites that are full of content yet without the flash that presupposes the need to cover up for no substance. As in, these are not those empty shells that we see, some of which are purely plagiarizing material for the purpose of wrapping ads as if mostly for nefarious purposes. 

The first two show the leaning that applies to our goals (TGS, Inc.). It'll be interesting to see how many more will be added. 

• Theories of Aether and Electricity -- Baez's blog as an effort to report on mathematical physics, his findings thereof. He started early and carried the same textual (enhanced with graphics) mode for years. We always pointed to it as a favorite site. Then, Baez moved to an updated format: Azimuth. It still maintains the clean, simple look offering the most information on the most fundamental of knowledge being studied. 
• nLab -- Baez, again. Not sure of his current involvement, but he got it started. nLab has several functions but is, generally, an example of how web'ing ought to be. 
• Math Central -- Just ran into this while tracking down some sources. Nice format, if you look closely, there use of CSS and JS, as well as implementing some of the basic notions of HTML. 
• ...

We will have more on other subjects. The motivation? At our portal (TGSoc.org) which we see as an example of 'portal to truth' (several modes) there is some discussion of our sites. The first attempt was in the ASP world until the damper of Office 365 came about. We looked around (2012 timeframe) and went with our own hack (HTML and some images scraped from the Microsoft offering). But, then mobility became Job'influenced, so CSS came forward. Finally, JS. 

We have found lots of sites that are minimal in that sense. Too, they remove some of the onus of worrying about the heavy foot of the boss (buy a package and get their oversight - it's not ethical - but the web never was - alas). 

It's encouraging to see that some semblance of sanity and decency is still around. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/29/2020

12/28/2020 -- Gardner's Beacon Vol, X, No. 2 points to this post. Let the discussion begin on how to have sustainability and how the TGS, Inc. can demonstrate/discuss issues/alternatives as well as explain how we got to where we are. 

12/28/2020 -- With respect to progress here and there, we can use Thomas' time here to map to there. We already have mentioned Spinoza and Descartes as cohorts of Thomas. Now, We need to add Pascal. He developed a calculator to help his father with his tax work (France). That is when Thomas and crew were working on getting over here. You know, I don't think that it was until Charles Sanders Peirce that we had someone over here getting intellectual attention over there. Tell us if we are wrong. 

01/25/2021 -- Added image for our portal (https://tgsoc.org).