> having a globally accepted standard for anything is a unique and historic achievement, let alone for free, fast, and robust global distribution of Turing-complete computation and content delivery.
It really is amazing.
> Now we can hope that those building blocks improve over time, but the current situation is so much better than it could have been.
I think the web is under-appreciated in part because most people have never used internet connected GUI computers without it, but it's important to remember that there's no a priori reason for why the web had to exist.
In an alternate timeline we could be living in a world where all interactive software has to be reviewed by a gatekeeper. I wasted an inordinate amount of time playing with this a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39205020 and I remember thinking, it's pretty cool that you don't need anyone's approval to release something like this, nor do you need to pay excessive fees to distribute it, nor does it take any meaningful time to download/install, and yet it works on all my devices, and it's relatively secure.
It really is amazing.
> Now we can hope that those building blocks improve over time, but the current situation is so much better than it could have been.
I think the web is under-appreciated in part because most people have never used internet connected GUI computers without it, but it's important to remember that there's no a priori reason for why the web had to exist.
In an alternate timeline we could be living in a world where all interactive software has to be reviewed by a gatekeeper. I wasted an inordinate amount of time playing with this a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39205020 and I remember thinking, it's pretty cool that you don't need anyone's approval to release something like this, nor do you need to pay excessive fees to distribute it, nor does it take any meaningful time to download/install, and yet it works on all my devices, and it's relatively secure.