David Weinberger writes Joho the Blog on the internet, libraries, knowledge, open data and the web's architecture.
HN links it for debates over the 'stupid network' idea and dumb pipes, and for his writing on taxonomy and open metadata.
People seem to be responding to the title rather than the content of this article. Funny enough, but the linked post is actually not about that thought experiment. It's Winer's response to someone else writing about the "What if?".
Winer more or less defends Zucker via the Joe Hewitt argument that the web is stagnating, that the web is not a sufficiently rich platform for apps and that the only (best?) way to move forward is to innovate on one's own without (any? too much?) consideration for standards.
I don't even understand this argument, to be frank. Winer says "We were making richer software than the stuff you can run in the web browser 20 years ago." But he gives no examples. I don't know what he has in mind, but really? Richer than 280slides? Richer than Gmail? Richer than Etherpad? Really?
As for the stagnating web, I don't buy that either. Even if it isn't all rainbows and ponies, there's a lot going on with web-based software in the last few years - arguably far more than on the desktop.
Edit: here's the original thought experiment post
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/05/15/if-mark-zuckerberg-invented-the-web
> I think we have a serious problem of definitions (which goes back to what I said about this being not trivial to define): we're both saying the phrase "dumb pipe" and apparently meaning quite different things by it.
Really? How many definitions are there?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_pipe
http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/stupidnet.html
> In an ideal world? A form of local loop unbundling, with a not-for-profit entity running/maintaining the local fiber, and umpteen ISPs readily available to handle termination and routing at the other end.
That's nice. Now you've either locked out small/unsophisticated ISPs/network users who can't or can't afford to light the fiber or increased cost and/or complexity by requiring an additional service provider on top of the dark fiber provider to provide bitstream, retail and other transport services. Also excellent choice for finger pointing when these two actors donit get along.
Taxonomy is hard, especially if you don't want it to be a collection of poorly-aging cultural biases. Even professional librarians have problems creating and maintaining future-proof ones.
Why does the Dewey Decimal System still have 10x as much space for Unitarianism as it does for all of Buddhism? [1] Well, think about what it would take to fix Dewey's initial biases post-hoc... either you have to get it exactly right the first time, or have a system that is designed to evolve.
It's unsurprising the wikipedia hive mind hasn't gotten it right. It's orthogonal to everything Wikipedia has generally done well. Seems like the best solution would be to have a separate taxonomy project that is overlaid on top of core wikipedia data by a set of flexible rules and not hardcoded in articles themselves.
[1] http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-sep03-04.html#dewey
I looked around for costs; basically the original copyright holder has to prove damages. Since most people using Youtube, et al, are not making that much profit, the DMCA-issuers won't face significant penalties for misusing DMCAs.
Seems like I won't get much penalties for taking down the trailers because it's hard to prove damages.
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/02/27/the-economics-of-accusation-penalty-for-false-dmca-claims-is-low/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100302/0432448359.shtml
Thanks for those pointers, it looks like he wrote five "nongenre" novels, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?18 . I was looking at his time-travel collection, Years in the Making.
Separately, Charles Singer edited a 1950's History of Technology encyclopedia which is well respected: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2013/07/28/the-history-of-the-history-of-technology/ and http://www.amazon.com/review/RG20DEV8YLX39/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=019858105X
Well, ISPs did not build their systems with equal upload and download in mind. There is no pure technical reason they couldn't have, but it was what they did. To replace all of that would be difficult, and the large players in the existing system will have economic motivations for fighting any change.
There is a pretty good write up here: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/10/03/why-up-is-slower-than-down/