On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 12:39 PM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Anybody can design a system that's theoretically better than any existing system if they are smart enough and work hard enough. The trick is to get everyone else to go along with it. And to displace something that actually exists and is working, the new system has to be MUCH better than the old. The more widely deployed the existing system is, the harder it is to replace it. And incremental changes are not as pure as a clean sheet design, they are usually easier to deploy.
The difference between what I am doing with the Mesh and what TimBL is doing on Solid is that he is just being himself and hoping that will be enough to be successful and I spent the best part of a decade working out why the Web succeeded and I designed the Mesh so to maximize the probability of success.
TimBL might well be successful a second time. But it is pretty clear that if either of us starts to pull ahead, they will quickly absorb what is useful from the other. That was also a part of the success of the Web. Will either succeed? Probably not but we have both been successful in deploying very large systems in the past. Nobody can be sure of success.
What I am certain of though is that failure is certain if nobody bothers to try. It is pretty easy to see where the Internet is headed at this point. The Web is the only open system that hasn't fallen into disrepair. The user base is headed off to the walled gardens because those are at least being maintained. The only thing that stops the phone system and SMTP becoming derelict is they are the only ubiquitous communications systems in use.
