To be explicit, 20 years ago, there were people on airplanes reading, composing, responding to email and reading creating updating, deleting documents in multip

To be explicit, 20 years ago, there were people on airplanes reading, composing, responding to email and reading creating updating, deleting documents in multiple applications. They were creating and following links to docs and email in applications. All offline. When they reconnected via modem in the hotel room, it all synched with the the servers. Code and design changes also replicated so the apps as well as the data were always up to date and in synch. Replication could filter only those records that the users needed. Even long-running background processes could be run locally. That was Lotus Notes 20 years ago. CouchDB and its relatives can do this because Damien modeled it after the Notes Database, but with open protocols and standards (yay!). Back then, even online was slow and expensive so many people worked in offline mode even when connected. Many still do this today, even on fast local networks. Perhaps there is yet more to be learned from the ancestors.