I think you are making the argument for what was known as “the semantic web”—the term seem to have fallen into disuse, though.
I also think that my browser is a client. It’s not a client for structured raw information, though, because there is no server which feeds it that (a client is just one half of a client-server pair, after all. A server-less client is not of much use). My browser is a client for web pages which used to mean mostly HTML and nowadays mean whatever JS can conjure.
By the way, where does RSS fit into your picture of the world?
I use RSS all the time, mostly via Firefox’s subscribe-to-page feature. I’ve considered looking for a native-client feed reader, but my understanding is that most sites don’t provide a full-text feed, which defeats the point.
I dislike that it’s based on XML, mostly because, even more so than JSON, XML is actively hostile to humans. It’s no less useful for that, though.
So far as I know it doesn’t handle reply chains at all, making it a sub-par fit for content that spawns discussion. I may be wrong about that. I still use it as the best available method for e.g. keeping up with LW.
I think you are making the argument for what was known as “the semantic web”—the term seem to have fallen into disuse, though.
I also think that my browser is a client. It’s not a client for structured raw information, though, because there is no server which feeds it that (a client is just one half of a client-server pair, after all. A server-less client is not of much use). My browser is a client for web pages which used to mean mostly HTML and nowadays mean whatever JS can conjure.
By the way, where does RSS fit into your picture of the world?
I use RSS all the time, mostly via Firefox’s subscribe-to-page feature. I’ve considered looking for a native-client feed reader, but my understanding is that most sites don’t provide a full-text feed, which defeats the point.
I dislike that it’s based on XML, mostly because, even more so than JSON, XML is actively hostile to humans. It’s no less useful for that, though.
So far as I know it doesn’t handle reply chains at all, making it a sub-par fit for content that spawns discussion. I may be wrong about that. I still use it as the best available method for e.g. keeping up with LW.