A battle rages over the loins of the web
And after two decades of wild evolution, we're finally ready to tell the story of how Web 2.0 grew up - and glimpsed its destiny.
This is that story.
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The Evolution of Web 2.0
The modern web has been flourishing in the wild for decades. What started as simple bulletin boards evolved into something far more complex—a digital ecosystem where different species of architecture compete for survival.
Like Darwin's finches, each web framework developed specialized traits. Some grew heavy armor (looking at you, enterprise Java). Others became nimble but fragile (hello, microservices). And some multiplied until they colonized every niche imaginable.
But every evolutionary story has its pivotal moments. And we're living through one right now.
Peak Web 2.0? The Three Alleles
In the great laboratory of the internet, three dominant alleles emerged from the primordial soup:
The Monoliths : PHP behemoths like WordPress and Laravel ruled the landscape. Your browser requests a page. The server generates it. The entire page gets sent. Simple. Familiar. But increasingly bloated with patches and plugins, like organisms weighed down by evolutionary baggage.
The JAMstacks : Static-first, API-driven, decoupled architectures promised salvation. Your browser requests a page. The server returns just enough code to bootstrap. Then your browser's "second brain"—a thicket of JavaScript—regenerates everything client-side. A clean separation of concerns, they said. Until bundle sizes exploded and state management became a philosophy major's nightmare.
HTMX : And then there's HTMX. A class of its own. Swimming upstream with the stubborn determination of a laser-eyed bison.
Which species is "best"? That's a matter of endless tribal warfare. Bundle sizes. Load times. Who owns state. The debates rage across developer Twitter like territorial disputes in the Serengeti.
Everyone has an opinion. Few have solutions.
Enter Carson Gross
Every evolutionary leap needs its catalyst. Enter Carson Gross—the scrappy half-man, half-laser-eyed bison from Montana.
Carson understood something most had forgotten: web experiences are made with hypermedia.
Not sprawling client-side state machines. Not million-line JavaScript bundles that take longer to download than a Tarantino film. Hypermedia.
While others fought over frameworks to rule them all, Carson went back to the roots. HTMX wasn't just another library—it was digital archaeology. A return to the elegant foundations of the web with a simple question: what if we just… didn't overcomplicate this?
The Return of HATEOAS
Carson revived an idea that sounded like an ancient deity but was actually just good sense: Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State (HATEOAS).
The principle is beautifully simple:
You click something.
The server responds with HTML.
The page updates accordingly.
The end.
No React hydration rituals. No Redux store archaeology. No webpack configurations that feel like deciphering the Rosetta Stone. Just hypermedia flowing between browser and server like nature intended.
This simplicity worked wonders. But even Carson's HTMX had one blind spot: intent.
The Limits of Web 2.0
Here's the dirty secret everyone knows but nobody likes to say at conferences: individual user intent was exogenous to the hypermedia.
Picture this: one visitor arrives with an invisible sticky note that says "I'm new here." Another shows up with "I'm a technical decision-maker." A third arrives with "I care about sustainability more than price."
Every user is unique. They bring different goals, levels of knowledge, and priorities.
So why do they all see the same page?
That would be boring.
The industry's answer was "personalization." But personalization became a euphemism for digital stalking. Netflix thinks you love action movies because you once watched a Jason Statham film during a fever dream. Amazon assumes you're starting a family because you bought baby clothes for your nephew.
We built billion-dollar surveillance systems to make educated guesses about what people actually want. The system was fundamentally backwards: using Big Data to make small assumptions about big human complexity.
The battle for the loins of the web had reached a stalemate. Until...
Epistemic Hypermedia
After two decades of evolution, Web 2.0 has one last trick up its sleeve. The trick that redeems the web from boring sameness.
Enter epistemic hypermedia.
"Epistemic" means relating to knowledge or belief. Where HTMX made hypermedia the engine of application state, epistemic hypermedia makes beliefs the driver of application state.
Instead of surveilling people to guess their intent, we just ask them.
Revolutionary, right?
Here's how it works: you visit a page and see the default version—just like everyone else. But the page is foldable. Hidden folds wait silently, ready to bloom into view when you disclose a belief.
You click "Yes, I'm interested in sustainable investing." New sections blossom into view.
You select "I'm technical." Detailed documentation unfolds.
You indicate "I'm price-sensitive." The page reconfigures itself with comparison charts and cost breakdowns.
The experience reconstructs itself around your declared worldview. Not a guess. Not a stalker's inference. A conversation.
The Magic Moment
The technical implementation is elegantly simple:
A user declares a belief (zero-party data).
The system updates their session state for that specific page and visitor.
Hidden folds reveal based on belief matching.
HTMX delivers the personalized fragments dynamically.
The page reshapes itself seamlessly — no reload, no cookies, no tracking, no creepiness.
This is hypermedia as the engine of application state—but with epistemic awareness. Beliefs and preferences become the driver of content revelation.
It's like moving from a fast food menu where everyone orders off the same board, to a sommelier who listens, understands, and reveals the perfect option for you.
Why This Changes Everything
For B2B SaaS: No more identical demos for Fortune 500 CTOs and scrappy founders. Let them steer toward what actually matters to them.
For E-commerce: Don't force bargain hunters and luxury buyers through the same funnel. Let them reveal what they actually care about—status, sustainability, performance, or price.
For Publishers: Stop worshipping at the altar of A/B tests. Let readers choose their own adventure, guided by curiosity and expertise.
For Financial Services: Instead of guessing investor risk tolerance, let people declare their investment philosophy — and unfold content accordingly.
This is personalization that doesn't feel like surveillance.
The Privacy Advantage
Surveillance personalization is dying. Apple kills third-party cookies. Google phases out tracking. The old regime collapses.
Epistemic hypermedia thrives in this environment because it doesn't depend on peering through keyholes. It depends on what people actually tell you.
That makes it not just a technical innovation but a philosophical one. Respecting human agency. Delivering relevance without creepiness.
The true battle for the loins of the web isn't about React vs. Svelte. It's about surveillance vs. conversation.
A New Species
This isn't an incremental improvement. It's speciation.
Traditional personalization requires: Data pipelines the size of oil rigs. Machine learning teams. Compliance headaches! Marginal conversion lifts
Epistemic hypermedia requires: Lightweight session state. Foldable content panes. Belief-driven interfaces. HTMX stitching it together!
It's not just a better mousetrap. It's a different species.
The Future Unfolds
The web has moved through evolutionary stages:
Static → Plain pages
Dynamic → Server-driven content
Personalized → Surveillance guesswork
Epistemic → Belief-driven interaction
The future isn't about frameworks or rendering wars. It's about whether we treat people like data points to be harvested—or like humans to be engaged.
Epistemic hypermedia chooses humanity. It chooses conversation over surveillance. It chooses folds of infinite possibility over boring sameness.
And in doing so, it redeems the web—one fold at a time.
The future of the web isn't about showing everyone the same thing.
It's about unfolding the infinite complexity of human belief.
And that future is already here.
