The observant may have noticed the use of

Legacy Web

on various pages of this capsule and may have wondered about the adjective. The argument is simple: the web is old, with an origin of 1990, or so. Gemini is much newer, let us say 2020. Since gemini is newer, gemini must be better. Therefore the web is worse, and so we mark it as "the Legacy Web" because it is old, and therefore bad.

Internet Relay Chat? Old, 1990s. Bad. See how this works? Now you have a go! Madlibs time! It is __ (year) and __________ (technology) is old, and thus bad.

Why is something newer better? Here we must touch on the Myth of Progress, which states that things get better over time. Therefore, newer things must be better than older things, therefore we tag older things as worse, because, well, all sorts of progress must have been made since whenever. That this logic is about as airtight as a wire bicycle basket is really besides the point.

There are at least two aspects here. The simple aspect is that the marketing department may wish to move something dreadful--cars, or such--so therefore we have "Keeping up with the Joneses" or the accumulation of ever newer material goods. It is no stretch to apply this mentality to technology, especially given that fashions and popularity do certainly apply: Rust, Perl.

One might ponder why people who cling to or, worse, turn to older materials or technologies might be shunned or even attacked by those with a better sense of fashion.

The more complicated aspect involves various Western intellectual traditions, notably "the Enlightenment" which of course followed "the Dark Ages". Obviously they were no slouches when it came to marketing. The real beauty is that there is no need to apply any thought: of course progress has been made, so of course the new thing must be better--how could this not be?

The short version is that "legacy web" amuses me more than it should.

tags #legacyweb #politics