DEMO: Do Websites Need Pages?

Until now, they’ve been the most efficient way we’ve had to communicate information.

But what are they, actually?

They are a vestige of the past. Prior to websites, we had books. At the dawn of the digital era, we needed familiar metaphors to ease the transition. Books had pages, so we converted that metaphor into the digital domain.

Over the last two decades, we’ve made them more sophisticated. We now have entire systems of templates and flows and componentry. But the fundamental architecture of a website is very clear.

But here's the question underneath: do people need pages, or do they simply need human ways of finding and exploring information?

If the answer is the latter, then the website is just one possible delivery mechanism.

And maybe not the best one anymore.

If Claude produces a slide, but that slide is a JPEG, what is actually a slide?

Does it need to be authored in Keynote or PowerPoint or Google Slides? Or is the definition of a slide actually completely different now: any image that communicates information in slide-like form, regardless of the substrate it was created in?

The same question applies to websites. 

Does a website have to be HTML and CSS and JavaScript? Components and pages? Templates and flows? Why would it need to look like any of that at all?

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, is it a duck?

When we think about generative interfaces, we tend to imagine AI orchestrating the substrate we're used to. Components and pages, dynamically generated. The same architecture, just assembled in real time instead of designed in advance.

We're taking the paradigm for granted and only questioning who does the assembly. The more interesting opportunity goes further. 

What do people actually need?

They need the information they're looking for. They need to see what's important for them to see in order to be informed. They need to accomplish whatever they came to accomplish.

If that information can be brought to them consistently and without fail, why does it matter whether the delivery mechanism looks like a website?

Picture something different.

You speak. The system listens. It asks clarifying questions when it needs to. A canvas—a visual surface—shows you information, reacts to your conversation, generates what you need to see in the moment you need to see it.

Do you need to scroll? Why?

Do you need flows and journeys? Why?

Do you need navigation? Why?

These aren't rhetorical questions. They're engineering questions with real answers. Scrolling exists because screens are finite and information exceeds them. Flows exist because transactions have steps. Navigation exists because information is distributed across locations.

But if the system understands what you need and brings it to you, the finite screen becomes a canvas that transforms. The steps of a transaction become a conversation. The distributed information becomes synthesized on demand.

The constraints that created pages, flows, and navigation don't disappear. They get solved differently.

When we think about the future of generative experiences, perhaps it's best to think about them as canvases. Canvases in continual motion, responding to conversation, generating what's needed in the moment it's needed.

A collapse of the distance between intent and information.

If it looks like a component, is it a component? If it looks like a page, is it a page?

And do you even need pages to begin with?