The Why

The modern world wide web has nothing to do with the first steps in the early 1990s. In the very beginning of the web we had HTML, images, the mosaic browser and a simple web server which delivered files - nothing less, nothing more. That basic "WWW equipment" was enough to share information instantanously around the world.

Now we have a large bunch of programming languages to generate web pages on the fly, complex web servers, a lot of data formats and - thanks to advertising and video - a massive need for bandwidth to transport the data from the web server to the browser. The browser - no, to a whole bunch of different flavours of web browsers!

The current "implementation" of the WWW needs a lot of resources: Raw materials to build computers fast enough to handle the computation  load and data throuput, energy to operate all theA few years ago a simple newspaper article, lets say 2000 ascii characters, needed 2 000 000 bytes network load.

This is a ratio between 1000:1 for (transported data):(relevent data)! devices and our time to install the right adds to view all the web sites and load all the advertising stuff.

How 1: Raw Materials

Try to use a computer older than 5 years to load modern web sites - slooooowww. You need a faster PC with more main memory and a faster WLAN. But that's only part of the whole image. All the devices which handle the data to bring a simple web page on your PC screen have to be fast enough. The web servers to hold and the network devices to transport the data.

This is a never (?) ending story: The need of new PCs gives us faster systems. The producers of web sites can use more complex web pages until ... we need a new PC and so on. That's the same for energy

How 2: Energy

Each computer needs electrical power. The same goes for the web servers and the network devices. But energy consumption is very flexible: The more client side executed software runs behind web pages, the more computer power is used by our client PCs.

Just look at your task manager (or similar tools at other computer systems than windows): Opening 2 or 3 web pages of some servers use up 100 percent of computer power just after they are loaded. It's your electricity bill you have to pay for their advertising!

How 3: Time

Modern WWW pages provide interactivity - this is one of the outcomes of the so called (and not very well defined) Web 2.0. This can be seen in many forms which provide permantly updated suggestions for typing. This increases data transfer and computing demand. On older PCs it's a hassle to use these forms: Count till three and type the next character ...

Some advanced web page scripts load advertising stuff prior to the content and/or do not work with ad filters like Firefox's AdBlock and similar products.

The bottom line

The so called modern Web (2.0) is louder, more colorful but less useful than the Web 5 or 10 years ago. Using more and more of the three mentioned types of resources.

One option might to fuse the straight forwardness of older web pages with the current possibilities where the latter ones where really needed. This is a concept not only for web pages but for many fields: Using the best breed of incandescent bulbs - low voltage halogene lamps with infrared reflective coatings - and you have twice the efficiency of a standard incandescent. With a natural spectrum and longevity specially in terms of power-on cycles.