4 ms·

Is this an actual talk he gave in 1973 or is this a spoof or something? If so, it seems he missed the mark (significantly) on web development. He said "if in

Is this an actual talk he gave in 1973 or is this a spoof or something? If so, it seems he missed the mark (significantly) on web development. He said "if in a few decades we get a document format on some sort of web of computers, I am sure we will be creating those documents by direct manipulation - there won't be any markup languages or stylesheets, that will make no sense." So that is either very sarcastic and cheeky, or straight up wrong. What am I missing?

sanderjd 13y ago
It's pure cheekiness. He is making the point that we're currently doing all sorts of things that would have seemed backwards to some researchers even 40 years ago.
- marcamillion 13y ago
  Oh ok. I was wondering how comes the audience (and video) seems so "current", but the content looks so dated.
humanrebar 13y ago
It's not an actual talk or a spoof. It's probably best described as a farce because he's using a lot of irony to make his points. I guess you could call it sarcasm. I think he's wrong as well. Often non-technical managers assume that since something is simple to describe, it will be simple to implement. This is the tech talk equivalent of that attitude. Also, there are CMSs and WYSIWYG webpage creators that operate at various levels of success. Markup languages and stylesheets coexist partly because they meet different use cases. For example, I've never heard of a spec for a WYSIWYG "language", so you're guaranteed to have to deal with vendor lock-in and a lack of portability unless you can then generate some text documents in a standardized language.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  Well, implementing the ideas we had 40 years ago using today's dogma took 40 years, so the fact that he doesn't specify his idea on replacing 40 years of engineering cruft in a 20 minute presentation can be overlooked, imho.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree with all his points, though I find the straw men littered throughout his talk and these comments unpersuasive. I also think rational decision making requires some predictions and successful trials before confirming any theses.
- EvanMiller 13y ago
  It is satire, not farce.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    Yeah, that's probably a better word for it.

sanderjd 13y ago

It's pure cheekiness. He is making the point that we're currently doing all sorts of things that would have seemed backwards to some researchers even 40 years ago.

marcamillion 13y ago
Oh ok. I was wondering how comes the audience (and video) seems so "current", but the content looks so dated.

humanrebar 13y ago

It's not an actual talk or a spoof. It's probably best described as a farce because he's using a lot of irony to make his points. I guess you could call it sarcasm. I think he's wrong as well. Often non-technical managers assume that since something is simple to describe, it will be simple to implement. This is the tech talk equivalent of that attitude. Also, there are CMSs and WYSIWYG webpage creators that operate at various levels of success. Markup languages and stylesheets coexist partly because they meet different use cases. For example, I've never heard of a spec for a WYSIWYG "language", so you're guaranteed to have to deal with vendor lock-in and a lack of portability unless you can then generate some text documents in a standardized language.

AsymetricCom 13y ago
Well, implementing the ideas we had 40 years ago using today's dogma took 40 years, so the fact that he doesn't specify his idea on replacing 40 years of engineering cruft in a 20 minute presentation can be overlooked, imho.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree with all his points, though I find the straw men littered throughout his talk and these comments unpersuasive. I also think rational decision making requires some predictions and successful trials before confirming any theses.
EvanMiller 13y ago
It is satire, not farce.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  Yeah, that's probably a better word for it.