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Nobody has yet implemented the Memex proposed by Bush in 1945.[1] In it, hyperlinked documents were stored in a massive LOCAL library, and could be shared in co

Nobody has yet implemented the Memex proposed by Bush in 1945.[1] In it, hyperlinked documents were stored in a massive LOCAL library, and could be shared in context at will. Local storage of data removes the tracking information you supply to enable advertising, and give them profits at your expense. It would drive the copyright rentier class (Disney et al) nuts, but could also be quite handy to have in the coming wave of DeGlobalization and supply chain restructuring. The editor of the Atlantic in his introduction said "The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work." Yet here we are, 70+ years later with that vision unfulfilled. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

afarrell 4y ago
Who will be willing to pay for it?
- mikewarot 4y ago
  It's just a program, there's no real cost to manufacture and distribute software. As for how would development be funded, a group effort, open source.
  - cruano 4y ago
    > there's no real cost to manufacture and distribute software Do you know where you are writing this? God, even if you managed to find people that are willing to sacrifice their >$100K/year for a good cause, "local storage" has both a start and a maintenance cost, especially "massive" ones. And copyright is a legal issue, not a technological one
    - mikewarot 4y ago
      >Do you know where you are writing this? Yes, in a community of people with a bent towards making things to scratch an itch. Some of them are highly in favor of monetizing those things, but yet not all, and we have been known to favor open source projects from time to time.
mixedCase 4y ago
So... IPFS, Torrents, eDonkey/Kad, Tor, I2P, what is missing between those?
- mikewarot 4y ago
  Local storage of everything. A language for the markup of hypertext documents (no, HTML doesn't do that). A strategy for recording an annotative trail.
  - mixedCase 4y ago
    All of those allow local storage. They in fact assume it. > A language for the markup of hypertext documents (no, HTML doesn't do that) What is missing? Specially when accounting for anchor links being able to target protocols other than HTTPs. > A strategy for recording an annotative trail Could you go into descriptive detail of what you actually mean here?
    - mikewarot 4y ago
      If I have a document, you can't annotate it without embedding new code in the document... you can't add a layer of markup on top of, and separate from, it. The decision to embed markup in documents was horrible in its effects. It gives copyright holders extortive power over criticism, for example. You have to copy a document to mark it up, which didn't need to be the case. As for annotative trail... imagine being able to lay out a set of pages of paper on a larger white sheet... and then make notes between two things showing how they are logically associated, in context. HTML links are blind, unidirectional, fragile, and can't go to an arbitrary position in a document.
      - mixedCase 4y ago
        Sorry but the first part you wrote doesn't make much sense. To the best of my understanding, you're just saying that you want diffs to be stored instead of a full copy of a document? If the whole point is to skirt around broken legislation/executive power not enforcing fair use as it should you've already lost on the fact alone that courts can interpret your layering as infringement; courts around the world have previously rule linking to be infringement as-is. But if you believe that'll actually solve things you could easily build an extension that layers HTML patches on top of another base HTML via XPath "coordinates". Of course I'm sure you've realized that if your base HTML is hosted by a hostile entity, good luck keeping it up to date with their modifications, and that's not limited to HTML as it would be a an issue regardless of whatever system you come up with and expect "the bad guys" to adopt. You either have copies, which means hosting copyrighted material, or you have references, which can go out of date. > HTML links are blind, unidirectional, fragile, and can't go to an arbitrary position in a document. Blind/unidirectional is fixed at the client level (e.g. the back button, history, you could do something like what this extension did if you want trees: https://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/09/display-firefox-browsing-history-with-history-tree/ https://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/09/display-firefox-browsing-h...). It doesn't make the slightest bit of technical sense to track backlinks on every hosted document because the incentives don't align and you'd be wasting a whole lot of space. You could have a separate service store this in a graph much like a web crawler. Don't need to reinvent HTML for that. Fragile, you fix with copies. You can't force people to host an immutable record forever and yes this is abusable by copyright trolls, again, can't fix the law with tech. As for linking to an arbitrary direction, you can href to a an ID and that's good enough a lot of the time. If you want any more than that you don't have to re-invent HTML: you just have to extend it with support for XPath targets. And that's something you can easily do with a browser extension all while keeping it fully backwards compatible with the web.

afarrell 4y ago

Who will be willing to pay for it?

mikewarot 4y ago
It's just a program, there's no real cost to manufacture and distribute software. As for how would development be funded, a group effort, open source.
- cruano 4y ago
  > there's no real cost to manufacture and distribute software Do you know where you are writing this? God, even if you managed to find people that are willing to sacrifice their >$100K/year for a good cause, "local storage" has both a start and a maintenance cost, especially "massive" ones. And copyright is a legal issue, not a technological one
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    >Do you know where you are writing this? Yes, in a community of people with a bent towards making things to scratch an itch. Some of them are highly in favor of monetizing those things, but yet not all, and we have been known to favor open source projects from time to time.

mixedCase 4y ago

So... IPFS, Torrents, eDonkey/Kad, Tor, I2P, what is missing between those?

mikewarot 4y ago
Local storage of everything. A language for the markup of hypertext documents (no, HTML doesn't do that). A strategy for recording an annotative trail.
- mixedCase 4y ago
  All of those allow local storage. They in fact assume it. > A language for the markup of hypertext documents (no, HTML doesn't do that) What is missing? Specially when accounting for anchor links being able to target protocols other than HTTPs. > A strategy for recording an annotative trail Could you go into descriptive detail of what you actually mean here?
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    If I have a document, you can't annotate it without embedding new code in the document... you can't add a layer of markup on top of, and separate from, it. The decision to embed markup in documents was horrible in its effects. It gives copyright holders extortive power over criticism, for example. You have to copy a document to mark it up, which didn't need to be the case. As for annotative trail... imagine being able to lay out a set of pages of paper on a larger white sheet... and then make notes between two things showing how they are logically associated, in context. HTML links are blind, unidirectional, fragile, and can't go to an arbitrary position in a document.
    - mixedCase 4y ago
      Sorry but the first part you wrote doesn't make much sense. To the best of my understanding, you're just saying that you want diffs to be stored instead of a full copy of a document? If the whole point is to skirt around broken legislation/executive power not enforcing fair use as it should you've already lost on the fact alone that courts can interpret your layering as infringement; courts around the world have previously rule linking to be infringement as-is. But if you believe that'll actually solve things you could easily build an extension that layers HTML patches on top of another base HTML via XPath "coordinates". Of course I'm sure you've realized that if your base HTML is hosted by a hostile entity, good luck keeping it up to date with their modifications, and that's not limited to HTML as it would be a an issue regardless of whatever system you come up with and expect "the bad guys" to adopt. You either have copies, which means hosting copyrighted material, or you have references, which can go out of date. > HTML links are blind, unidirectional, fragile, and can't go to an arbitrary position in a document. Blind/unidirectional is fixed at the client level (e.g. the back button, history, you could do something like what this extension did if you want trees: https://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/09/display-firefox-browsing-history-with-history-tree/ https://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/09/display-firefox-browsing-h...). It doesn't make the slightest bit of technical sense to track backlinks on every hosted document because the incentives don't align and you'd be wasting a whole lot of space. You could have a separate service store this in a graph much like a web crawler. Don't need to reinvent HTML for that. Fragile, you fix with copies. You can't force people to host an immutable record forever and yes this is abusable by copyright trolls, again, can't fix the law with tech. As for linking to an arbitrary direction, you can href to a an ID and that's good enough a lot of the time. If you want any more than that you don't have to re-invent HTML: you just have to extend it with support for XPath targets. And that's something you can easily do with a browser extension all while keeping it fully backwards compatible with the web.