> The promise of a computer is to reveal truth, through a seamless flow of information. [...] Information has not become more seamless. I disagree pretty stron

> The promise of a computer is to reveal truth, through a seamless flow of information. [...] Information has not become more seamless. I disagree pretty strongly here. When I got my first computer as a kid, OSes outside of POSIX were silos, you literally couldn't read a Mac disk on DOS or vice versa. We've made huge strides in terms of a heterogeneous internet that supports all manner of data exchange unimaginable in decades past. Now, is it seamless? No, but with orders of magnitude more programmers and more code, the edges of the interaction graph also have exploded; of course there will be more seams. The lesson isn't that we screwed up and somehow need to wrangle the complexity. To the contrary, successful ecosystems require diversity. We do not need an omniscient benevolent dictator to show us the way, rather we need to embrace the chaos and carve out smaller spaces for elegant systems within the jungle. It's a tricky balance because economies of scale are valuable, and capitalist incentives push businesses towards consolidation, but a single hulking Tower of Babel, no matter how high, is still a local maximum and structurally vulnerable.