> What can we do now that couldn't be done 20 years ago (putting aside connection speed) and is all of this progress really worth the trouble. Well, I know you

> What can we do now that couldn't be done 20 years ago (putting aside connection speed) and is all of this progress really worth the trouble. Well, I know your 20 years is hyperbole, but let's see: 1) We can display video and play sounds. We can do it using native browser controls now, but in 1994 you couldn't do it at all - plugins weren't introduced until Netscape Navigator 2.0 which came out a year later. 2) We can display updated data without reloading the entire website. This let's us do stuff like chat or use collaborative tools. 3) We can disassociate content from styling, so styling data can be transmitted once and can be changed en masse with ease. 4) Cookies showed up 19 1/2 years ago, so you wouldn't be able to store user login data without it showing up in the URL - it makes sending URLs to other people very awkward. 5) Oh wait, you wouldn't be able to log in because forms weren't in the HTML spec yet, HTML 2.0 didn't come out til 1995. 6) We can actually... do layouts of web content. Tables didn't come around til HTML 3.0. The initial version of the web was pretty much a prettier version of Gopher - with some inline graphics and styling. This site in would not be able to exist in 1994, unless you wanted to submit comments via email?