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On the one hand, it's a common sentiment that we should just be grateful for how great things are today. See, for example, the famous comedy routine "Everything

On the one hand, it's a common sentiment that we should just be grateful for how great things are today. See, for example, the famous comedy routine "Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy" by Louis CK [1]. On the other hand, would we have cell phones, ubiquitous credit card-capable point of sale machines, and airplanes with in-flight Internet, if people hadn't dared to dream that things could be better? Yes, children can learn basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But what if we had a platform that was easy to learn and not full of security pitfalls? One can dream. And the OP has some concrete suggestions for how to get there. And sometimes, you have to drop existing systems, or aspects of them, to get to that better future. For example, on a cell phone, you don't actually get a dial tone and send DTMF in real time, as one did on a touch-tone landline phone. (This reminds me of jacquesm's contrast of DTMF and GSM [2], posted in the comment thread for part 1.) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8LaT5Iiwo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8LaT5Iiwo4 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15322196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15322196

aaron-lebo 9y ago
It's not that I'm advocating being a luddite, stopping progress, or uncritically accepting the web, it's just that the most useful form of idealism (at least as far as I can see it), is realistic idealism because it's the most likely to be implemented and affect change. It's just hard for me to understand how realistically a clean room implementation of NewWeb is gonna beat out something that's already had billions poured into it and even today is progressing. The much easier step is figuring out how to make the web better, but it isn't sexy. No matter what you come up with is gonna be imperfect and criticized and have holdouts anyway.
- mwcampbell 9y ago
  Yes, on reflection, I agree with you about that. After all, cell phones (my main analogy from the Louis CK sketch) are still compatible with the PSTN.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

It's not that I'm advocating being a luddite, stopping progress, or uncritically accepting the web, it's just that the most useful form of idealism (at least as far as I can see it), is realistic idealism because it's the most likely to be implemented and affect change. It's just hard for me to understand how realistically a clean room implementation of NewWeb is gonna beat out something that's already had billions poured into it and even today is progressing. The much easier step is figuring out how to make the web better, but it isn't sexy. No matter what you come up with is gonna be imperfect and criticized and have holdouts anyway.

mwcampbell 9y ago
Yes, on reflection, I agree with you about that. After all, cell phones (my main analogy from the Louis CK sketch) are still compatible with the PSTN.