Richard MacManus

Happy Web Freedom Day to those who celebrate (i.e. everyone who uses the fediverse):

“Just over a week after Mosaic 1.0 was released, CERN gifted the Web to the world as open source software. As of 30 April 1993, the still relatively new Internet communications platform was suddenly free for anyone to use, with no strings attached.” https://cybercultural.com/p/1993-mosaic-launches-and-the-web-is-set-free/

Today's my first day in a new role: Head of Editorial at Latent Space. From ReadWriteWeb to The New Stack, I've always loved being at the cutting edge of tech x media. So I'm thrilled to join swyx & his team!

p.s. given that AI tech talk typically gets a hostile reception on the fediverse, I likely won't post about my work much here. But if you are interested in these topics, I encourage you to subscribe to my articles: https://www.latent.space/

I will say this about the fediverse: it’s not the kind of place where a company or someone still working there will post “We’re expanding and hiring!” just a few months after it laid off 75% of its staff. Small mercies.

Apparently it’s 20 years since Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet. On that same day, 21 March 2006, I was blathering on about “microcontent design” on ReadWriteWeb. This was the feeds world that web geeks like me wanted to become a reality: i.e. web standards-based feeds, using RSS/Atom, structured blogging, microformats, etc. Little did we know that Twitter would introduce the concept of proprietary feeds to the internet…and that would win out over web standards. https://web.archive.org/web/20060508071004/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microcontent_de.php

Very sad to hear of the passing of Om Malik (@Onmyom@mstdn.social), one of the OG tech bloggers. Our blogs worked together at the Crunchies in 2007 (https://cybercultural.com/p/026-rww-redesign-2007-crunchies/) and earlier that year I'd met up with him at a local SF cafe (https://cybercultural.com/p/024-readwriteweb-key-hire-hustle-culture/). Even though we were jostling for position on the Technorati charts at the time, he was the nicest, wisest, most generous with his advice person in Silicon Valley. RIP Om, you were one of the original minds of tech. https://om.co/2026/06/24/1966-2026/

Well said.
“…the web is not a collection of technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The web is a philosophical choice to build a system that puts humans as its core constituency. The platform of technologies designed with that philosophy in mind may include AI-related systems. But if they are going to be part of the web, then they must be designed to put humans first.” @torgo@mastodon.social

RE: @classicweb@indieweb.social

My @classicweb@indieweb.social bot is up and running again. Per below, I've been rather distracted with real-life priorities in recent months, but I spent some time with Codex yesterday and today in order to make the bot far more automated. Now it just needs approvals from me once per day, so will post on a regular cadence once more.

This weekend I began #blogging again like it was 2003. Leaflet, which is an AT Protocol product, reminds me a lot of Radio Userland in 2003 (when I started ReadWriteWeb). It has an informal quality and it encourages community inter-linking. I also like that it's integrated with Bluesky, so comments and even trackbacks are potentially much easier than e.g. using Webmentions with Mastodon. I want ActivityPub to go this direction, too. I expand on all this in my Leaflet: https://ricmac.leaflet.pub/3mjcsrphlnc25

Simon Reynolds, one of my favourite authors, on blogging in the 2000s. He still blogs to this day, unusually running multiple Blogspot sites, one for each book and/or genre he writes about. I subscribe to all of them in my Feedbin / NetNewsWire setup, and dip in from time to time. Also some other music bloggers, especially of the esoteric variety. Alas, tech bloggers aren’t as active these days…or as interesting, tbh. I like that early 2000s energy of the mp3 bloggers.

In my current jobless state, I’ve found it hard to focus on anything other than finding a way to earn an income again…and family stuff. So my days are filled up with my Web AI projects (mostly head-down at this stage), family (picking up kids from school, taking them to swimming lessons, etc), looking at the job boards and usually throwing my hands in the air, and just generally feeling anxious. It’s also meant I can’t focus on writing internet history or even post on Mastodon. Weird times.

What is the agentic web?

I’ve published a new post defining the term and placing it in the broader history of the web:

Read web → Read/write web → Platform web → Agentic web

My core argument is that websites are not disappearing. They still matter, especially because the web is fundamentally a human construct. But their role is expanding, because (like it or not) AI agents will increasingly be used by people to access and interact with websites. https://ricmac.org/2026/05/08/what-is-the-agentic-web/ #AI #AgenticWeb

My personal reflections on a hectic and inspiring week in San Francisco, covering the AI Engineer World's Fair. https://agenticweb.news/ai-engineer-worlds-fair/

New from my Web AI Lab: I’ve built an “article assistant” for my site that runs using local AI in the browser (via Chrome + Gemini Nano) when available — and falls back to a cloud model when it isn’t.

Before you dismiss this because it's AI, I think this has huge implications for the #OpenWeb. Instead of sending every interaction to BigTech clouds, users can increasingly run AI on their own device: better privacy, lower cost & more user control.

Check it out: https://ricmac.org/2026/03/19/article-assistant-local-ai-browser/ #WebAI

It turns out job-hunting and/or figuring out what's next in terms of an income...well it's more work than my previous day job! The bad news if you sometimes click on my links: Cybercultural isn't being updated as regularly now :( Sorry about that... The good news (depends on your interests tho) is that my personal website is rocking with new posts, new design, and more. If you're interested in the intersection of open web and AI, you might like to read my latest: https://ricmac.org/2026/03/11/webmcp-ai-agents-interact-website/

"Hey...let's be careful out there." Prompted by the immortal words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues, I look at two lessons from RunSignup’s careful AI rollout:

1. Embed AI where users already work.
2. Move fast — but safely.

I also reflect on some of the negative feedback about agentic AI this week — including continued layoffs in our industry and a lack of user trust in AI.

https://ricmac.org/2026/05/29/agentic-ai-business-lessons/ #AI #AgenticWeb

My latest newsletter -> This week's market signals suggest the conversation is moving beyond AI models and toward enterprise infrastructure.

AWS + Adobe are using MCP to connect enterprise agents, Vercel has launched its eve framework, Okta has published an agent identity roadmap, and Google has proposed an open discovery layer.

Together they point to the emergence of an enterprise agent stack.

https://agenticweb.news/agent-stack-becomes-enterprise-infrastructure/ #AgenticWeb

Most people think AI will reduce the importance of websites. I think the opposite is happening — but in a very different way. Here's how I'm looking at the emerging Agentic Web, including its opportunities for web publishers and developers...and the very real threats, too. https://ricmac.org/2026/04/07/the-agentic-web/

Paul Ford ( @ftrain@tilde.zone) is blogging again and I’ve found his posts speaking to me, like they did 20+ years ago. Helps that I’m about the same age as him, so I can identify with the career and life angst he writes about. Also it’s something to do with me enjoying dipping into blogs again, since a lot of social media posts are really offputting nowadays (I hate this, I hate that, etc).

“…while I am many places right now, I am not in career heaven. So I took the train home.” https://ftrain.com/whoompf

I experimented with WebMCP on my personal website, exposing two tools an AI assistant can call directly from the browser: searching an article and subscribing to my newsletter. It’s a small prototype, but it hints at how websites are fast becoming AI-interactive surfaces. https://ricmac.org/2026/03/11/webmcp-ai-agents-interact-website/ #WebAI #WebMCP #WordPress

RIP Sam Neill, one of New Zealand’s finest. https://youtu.be/ScAktnImPbQ?si=NOVvMekDSu68lPBL

I'd like to share what I've been working on, in a #FediHire kind of way:

I’ve been exploring how AI systems are starting to act as an interface to the web. To help organizations navigate this shift, I’ve developed an *Agentic Web Audit* — a hands-on, non-automated assessment of how AI systems access, understand, and interact with your site, and where the biggest opportunities are.

If your org needs help adapting its website to the AI era, this is what I offer: https://ricmac.org/agentic-web-audit/

Agentrification, Promptotype, Wrapplication: New Words for Work https://aboard.com/more-new-words-for-new-work/ (by @ftrain@tilde.zone)

“The future is much more likely to be AI embedded inside a million bespoke workflows, not a million bespoke workflows jammed into a single AI interface. For product leaders and designers, that’s a big opportunity.” https://bigmedium.com/ideas/links/saas-is-dead-benedict-evans.html

Wow… I voted yes. @evan@cosocial.ca

As part of my #WebAI explorations, I've built an AI chatbot for my personal website called Ask Ricmac. Under the hood, it runs on a Cloudflare Workers backend that uses Vectorize, D1 and Workers AI. During development, I also used the WordPress MCP Adapter and Claude Desktop. In this post I explain how these pieces fit together and the role each one plays. https://ricmac.org/2026/03/06/building-ask-ricmac-my-first-experiment-in-the-web-ai-stack/