It's possible that the reason the web's still "the same old thing" is because it has been proven an effective platform for distributing services and is, _in pra

It's possible that the reason the web's still "the same old thing" is because it has been proven an effective platform for distributing services and is, _in practice_, a system that's extremely scalable and evolvable. Infact, it's so successful there's nothing to compare it to - which means no value judgement or comparison is at all "obvious". HTTP is also extensible (by design), which has lead to stuff like WebDAV and the like. Stuff that is used large scale, over the web. So the web is not 'just' HTTP. There's deliberate trade-offs in the web's architecture which means, unfortunately, you can keep coming up with edge-case applications which are challenging (although often not impossible) to implement using web technology. The reality is that a large majority of applications are information-centric, are distributed in nature, need to evolve over extended periods of time, and therefore benefit _greatly_ from the trade-offs that the web has made. The web's not perfect but it's evolving and - importantly - it doesn't have the benefit of being completely fictitious and living inside the mind of a jilted, chippy geek. No offense. ;)