It was hell, but perhaps out of that hell was fashioned a sort of paradise. If the framers of the Internet had not been faced with disparate systems all speaki

It was hell, but perhaps out of that hell was fashioned a sort of paradise. If the framers of the Internet had not been faced with disparate systems all speaking different languages and protocols, if they had not been introduced to computing as a babel of vendors all wanting to do their own thing, then perhaps they would not have longed for vendor-neutral, interoperable protocols, such as we have today. The drive in the 70s to hook up very different computing platforms and have them all talking to one another, that's what gave us the Internet today. Perhaps the choices in OS have diminished since the demise of proprietary systems and bespoke OS for so many platforms, but from where I sit, I still see a wide diversity of devices all connecting to the same Internet, all speaking the same protocol, and I'm thankful for that development.