I share the sentiments. And the first time I got upset about bloat was in 1993 when instead of a <HR> tag, people put a GIF with a line ;-). Some of it, though

I share the sentiments. And the first time I got upset about bloat was in 1993 when instead of a <HR> tag, people put a GIF with a line ;-). Some of it, though, is a natural consequence on the commercial potential of the Web being realized. "If you put up an abreuvoir, the pigs will come", to quote the German supreme court (out of context). Perhaps one could design another protocol that is designed so that it cannot be commercially useful. Because we live in an "attention society" (attention = power = money) this means in all likelihood that such a WWW successor would by definition not be able to get as big as the WWW (which is an upside and a downside at once). Decentralized ideas are very appealing, but centralization is used to make the existing Web fast and convenient - this is also something that will have to be addressed somehow (maybe there is a way to have physical centralization but logical distribution and a way so that the two levels - physical and logical - can't see each other).