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100 Year Architecture

100 Year Architecture

A history of the world wide web, with some important lessons for software architects of today. Ted Nelson's ideas for a deeply hyperlinked future were brilliant, useful, and a perfect fit for the way we express and share knowledge, and yet they were superseded by Tim Berners-Lee's simpler, more-fragile and pragmatic approach. So are we stuck with the inferior web that we have? Perhaps not. Great ideas have a habit of failing when the innovation leap is too great and then resurrecting themselves in smaller steps later.

Julian Browne

November 06, 2012
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  1. 100-year Architecture A cautionary tale of how the battle for

    the web was lost and won Friday, 9 November 12
  2. We should work toward a universal linked information system, in

    which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. May 1990 Friday, 9 November 12
  3. The human mind .. operates by association With one item

    in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next .. in accordance with some intricate web of trails Friday, 9 November 12
  4. The human mind .. operates by association With one item

    in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next .. in accordance with some intricate web of trails Whole new forms of encyclopaedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them Friday, 9 November 12
  5. "In 1974, computers were oppressive devices in far-off air-conditioned places.

    Now you can be oppressed by computers in your own living room" Computer Lib, 1987 Friday, 9 November 12
  6. GET Fetch Something HEAD Find out about something POST Update

    Something PUT Replace Something DELETE Delete Something Friday, 9 November 12
  7. 31 Some people think that REST means "use HTTP". It

    doesn't. It is very easy to use HTTP in non-RESTful ways and also to use custom protocols other than HTTP to provide REST-based architectures. Friday, 9 November 12
  8. Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you

    will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days .. Eric Raymond "How to be a Hacker" Friday, 9 November 12
  9. "In a big company, you can do what all the

    other big companies are doing" "But a start-up can't do what all the other start-ups do" "I don't think a lot of people realise this, even in start-ups" Beating the Averages Paul Graham Friday, 9 November 12
  10. The Paper Prison "The four walls of paper are like

    a prison because every idea wants to spring out in all directions - everything is connected with everything else, sometimes more than others." Friday, 9 November 12
  11. "Computing is made up of !les and directories and that’s

    a tradition left behind from the 1940s that no one questions." "Another tradition is that one !le equals one document." Friday, 9 November 12
  12. EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are

    no "subjects" at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. 1974 Friday, 9 November 12
  13. EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are

    no "subjects" at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. 1974 Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and arti!cial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorisable and sequential when they can't. 1987 Friday, 9 November 12
  14. 54 ZigZag File System This is not about reality, it's

    about imaginary structures that are useful We should not impose regularity where it does not exist We have been forced by the conventionally available software to warp and break the information we want to store Friday, 9 November 12
  15. In 1964 Xanadu was a dream in a single mind.

    In 1980, it was the shared goal of a small group of brilliant technologists. By 1989, it will be a product. And by 1995, it will begin to change the world. John Walker AutoDesk. 1988 Friday, 9 November 12
  16. In 1964 Xanadu was a dream in a single mind.

    In 1980, it was the shared goal of a small group of brilliant technologists. By 1989, it will be a product. And by 1995, it will begin to change the world. John Walker AutoDesk. 1988 DEMO Friday, 9 November 12
  17. longest-running vapourware project in the history of the computing industry

    A 30-year saga of rabid prototyping and heart-slashing despair Gary Wolf Friday, 9 November 12
  18. Jonathan Vos Post Xanadu is not the "total insanity" of

    Wolf's final sentence. Someday this amazing hypertext program will be here and will fulfil all the fantasies of its true believers. But Bill Gates himself couldn't pay me enough to manage the software development. Friday, 9 November 12
  19. The web has won, maybe Big vendor dominance is under

    serious threat Friday, 9 November 12
  20. Multi-dimensional data unconstrained by table-like structures and rigid schemas Links

    that overlap and work both ways Links that have meaning and/or value Links that don’t break Friday, 9 November 12
  21. "One profound insight can be extracted from the long and

    sometimes painful Xanadu story: The most powerful results often come from constraining ambition and designing only micro- standards on top of which a rich exploration of applications and concepts can be supported." Vint Cerf - Chief Internet Strategist, Google Friday, 9 November 12