True -- the Web gained immense leverage from its ease of access. But so did a lesser example: CB radio. They created a commons, in each case: a place shared for general good.
And then began the rise of the hooligans -- in both cases. The commons got raided and seized by those who only wanted to own them and exploit others. CB radio became a useless fog of noise. The Web has become a home for professional malware and financial exploitation. Our hindsight tells us that two-way links might have helped -- they might still help, if we can find the geniuses who can implement them cheaply and usably. After all, we've built spam filters and anti-malware code of great sophistication and power; couldn't that same ingenuity be applied to redesigning TCP/IP and fitting it forward to prevent what we suffer now? One-way links have the terrible weakness of anonymity of their source -- a virtue in a trustworthy setting, but a weakness in the general world. E-mail has similar weaknesses, also designing in the anonymity of its source, and that took us into the tornado of spam and malware. Now we've at least set up filters, but they're a major pain -- we're addicted to convenience. It's funny how the idea of hypertext, as Nelson foresaw it, was circulating in the 1960s across the computing community. I recall discussing it with a systems architect who had worked at Univac in Blue Bell, PA, back in the 1970s. We were both doing mainframe work. Back then, the computing power to do what we were talking about was simply nonexistent. Eric Scoles wrote: > Eh, well, I think Ted Nelson is a little miffed (somewhat rightfully) at > not getting credit for his vision. But I keep remembering that Xanadu, > much like OpenDoc in the 90s, never got off the ground. A big part of > that was because it was too complex to implement: Xanadu would have > required not only inventing complex new protocols, but convincing people > to adopt them. > > HTML+HTTP is "bad hypertext", by one way of thinking, but it has the > great virtue of being really, really cheap to implement. That's what > Berners-Lee wanted: Basically a smarter Gopher. Something you could > teach a physicist to work in a few minutes of explanation. > > The "one-way link" also has the great virtue of not requiring someone's > approval or blessing before you link to them. It would be a radically > different web -- much more "closed", and thus probably would not have > excited people nearly as much. > > > Pat Rapp wrote: > >> Tornado-like destruction? Did I sleep through a tornado? >> Sounds like this guy is a little grumpy. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Alicia Henn" <[email protected]> >> To: <[email protected]> >> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:34 PM >> Subject: It could have been so different >> >> >> >> Here's an interesting article about Theodor Holm Nelson, an early >> intellect in the creation of the world wide web. >> >> "One-way links can be easily broken, and there is no simple way to >> preserve authorship and credit, as was possible with a project called >> Xanadu that Mr. Nelson began in the 1960s. His two-way links might >> have avoided the Web’s tornado-like destruction of the economic value >> of the printed word, he has contended, by incorporating a system of >> micropayments." >> >> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11stream.html?th&emc=th >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
