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I don't want to detract from TBL's accomplishments, especially on this occasion but, he didn't solve the hypertext problem insomuch as he decided that the reall

I don't want to detract from TBL's accomplishments, especially on this occasion but, he didn't solve the hypertext problem insomuch as he decided that the really hard things like provenance and bidirectional linkages weren't important. Google and Facebook did solve those problems, but only for commercial benefit. Moreover, it's clear that TBL regrets that early decision to the degree that he rails against the walled gardens.

syshum 10y ago
>Moreover, it's clear that TBL regrets that early decision to the degree that he rails against the walled gardens. he rails against the walled gardens while at the same time putting things into the standard, like EME, they powers them.
- noblethrasher 10y ago
  The goal of advocacy is to rouse a sympathetic collective that you can leverage at the bargaining table. But, when the time comes, you play whatever hand you have. The W3C has to negotiate with industry. But, unfortunately for us that care about the open web, its position is weak.
- aanm1988 10y ago
  I think the EME thing is a symptom of a worse problem, which is that the internet is very much controlled by a handful of commercial interests. Whoever controls browsers can become a bad actor and you either go along with it or end up with a broken system (this site only works in IE).
chubot 10y ago
But that's exactly what I disagree with. Design is as much about what to leave out as what to include. Leaving out those things wasn't an accident or ignorance as Alan Kay claims. There were a lot of very conscious design decisions involved in the web -- again see "Weaving the Web". He may regret that the web has evolved into walled gardens, but what could he have possibly have done about it? There's to prevent that decades in advance, at least not without strangling it from birth.
- noblethrasher 10y ago
  I don't think that you and I are in disagreement about the TBL’s design competence: I stated that his decision to set aside the problem of provenance that preoccupied other hypertext research was intentional. But, your argument is perilously close to begging the question that the success of web is a good thing. Now, I happen to think that the web is a net good (no pun intended), because (among other things) it helped break Microsoft’s hegemony and continues to force OS vendors to provide and support a standard universal computing platform (albeit a crippled one). But, it’s also arguable that the success of the web may have set personal computing back by a few decades, while also exacerbating a bunch of other problems like wealth inequality and reduced privacy/sovereignty, because it turned the Internet into a big modem. I’ll take a look at Weaving the Web; thank you for the recommendation. To you, I commend Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future.

syshum 10y ago

>Moreover, it's clear that TBL regrets that early decision to the degree that he rails against the walled gardens. he rails against the walled gardens while at the same time putting things into the standard, like EME, they powers them.

noblethrasher 10y ago
The goal of advocacy is to rouse a sympathetic collective that you can leverage at the bargaining table. But, when the time comes, you play whatever hand you have. The W3C has to negotiate with industry. But, unfortunately for us that care about the open web, its position is weak.
aanm1988 10y ago
I think the EME thing is a symptom of a worse problem, which is that the internet is very much controlled by a handful of commercial interests. Whoever controls browsers can become a bad actor and you either go along with it or end up with a broken system (this site only works in IE).

chubot 10y ago

But that's exactly what I disagree with. Design is as much about what to leave out as what to include. Leaving out those things wasn't an accident or ignorance as Alan Kay claims. There were a lot of very conscious design decisions involved in the web -- again see "Weaving the Web". He may regret that the web has evolved into walled gardens, but what could he have possibly have done about it? There's to prevent that decades in advance, at least not without strangling it from birth.

noblethrasher 10y ago
I don't think that you and I are in disagreement about the TBL’s design competence: I stated that his decision to set aside the problem of provenance that preoccupied other hypertext research was intentional. But, your argument is perilously close to begging the question that the success of web is a good thing. Now, I happen to think that the web is a net good (no pun intended), because (among other things) it helped break Microsoft’s hegemony and continues to force OS vendors to provide and support a standard universal computing platform (albeit a crippled one). But, it’s also arguable that the success of the web may have set personal computing back by a few decades, while also exacerbating a bunch of other problems like wealth inequality and reduced privacy/sovereignty, because it turned the Internet into a big modem. I’ll take a look at Weaving the Web; thank you for the recommendation. To you, I commend Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future.