Talk at Bush Symposium: Notes

Who is web3 for? • Robin Rendle

Thoughts from Robin, prompted by the Web History podcast I’m narrating and the other Robin’s notes on web3 that I linked to:

Who is the web for? Everyone, everywhere, and not only the few with a financial stake in it. It’s still this enormously beautiful thing that has so much potential.

But web3? That’s just not it, man.

Exactly! The blinkered web3 viewpoint is a classic example of this fallacious logic (also, as Robin points out, exemplified by AMP):

1. Something must be done!
2. This (terrible idea) is something.
3. Something has been done.

A History of the Web in 100 Pages - Web Directions

I’m excited by this documentary project from John! The first video installment features three historic “pages”:

• As We May Think,
• Information Management: A Proposal, and
• the first web page.

Chapter 1: Birth | CSS-Tricks

This is wonderful! A whole series on the history of the web from Jay Hoffman, the creator of the similarly-themed newsletter and timeline.

This first chapter is right up my alley, looking at the origins of hypertext, the internet, and the World Wide Web.

Tools & Craft - Episode 03: Ted Nelson

A great interview with Ted Nelson at the Internet Archive where he reminisces about Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor, Vannevar Bush, hypertext and Xanadu. Wind him and let him go!

There’s an interesting tidbit on what he’s up to next:

So, the first one I’m trying to build will just be a comment, but with two pages visibly connected. And the second bit will be several pages visibly connected. A nice example is Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire, which is a long poem by the fictitious author John Shade, connected to a large number of idiotic footnotes by the fictitious academic Charles Kinbote.

Ironically, back in the days of the Dark Brown Project, I actually got permission from the publishers of Pale Fire to demonstrate it on the Brown system. So now I hope to demonstrate it on the new Xanadu.

Pale Fire is the poem referenced in Blade Runner 2049:

Cells interlinked within cells interlinked…

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us - YouTube

Looking back on this classic explainer video from eleven years ago, I know exactly what’s meant by this comment:

its weird that when i first saw this video it made me think of the future, and now i watch it and it reminds me of the past..