[self-interest] Quiet in Self land?

[Casey Ransberger]

The web is fundamentally broken. I'm not advocating it because it's any good, I'm advocating it because it's a way for all of this hard work to survive, man!

If you wanna see a better web? Man, just check out Ted Nelson's work. He needs help with it, too, because his vision reaches beyond his own capability to make it real as a human being. He's got mostly the idea right, he just needs some people to help him make it happen. 

Think about it: two-way web links that cannot break. Attribution by design. It's so far ahead of its time and yet it hurts somewhat that we haven't actually accomplished even this seminal, early idea yet. 

Anyway, I've always held that people with passion will do better work than those without it, regardless of "aptitude." And if Douglas Engelbart was here, all I could possibly do is thank him for daring to do and write what he did. And maybe a big "thank you" hug. 

Also, Mayuresh, when it comes to sex: I would be a professional if that was legal in this state. Bwahahaha!

Casey

> On Sep 16, 2014, at 5:33 AM, "Mayuresh Kathe mayuresh at kathe.in [self-interest]" <self-interest at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> i think we should let go of the notion that the "www" is the only 
> hyperlinking system we should focus on.
> i believe the "www" is way over-rated.
> 
> using the web is like engaging in amateur sex.
> there's lots of loud action,
> but very little real pleasure,
> so you end up doing more of it.
> 
> ~mayuresh
> 
> ps: apologies if i have offended anyones sensibilities.
> 
> On 2014-09-16 17:53, Casey Ransberger casey.obrien.r at gmail.com 
> [self-interest] wrote:
> > Hey Chris. Yeah, Squeak has that same problem too. The browser that
> > was designed to meet the specifications of NCSA Mosaic. But the code
> > for these things is virtually useless now.
> > 
> > The browser, and I'm sure that I'm preaching to the converted here,
> > has absolutely eclipsed the complexity of the operating system that it
> > really actually needs to run above. Another way of saying this: the
> > browser has replaced the operating system.
> > 
> > I'm going to go even further with this argument. It isn't comfortable
> > to talk about and I'm not even comfortable saying it, but: systems
> > like Smalltalk and Self were designed above all to be used by people.
> > The web browser as we have it today is an amalgamation of poorly
> > thought out ideas all jammed together to make something, which in its
> > millions of lines of total code (I count dependencies,) still isn't as
> > good at its job as Self or Smalltalk are.
> > 
> > If w e could just magically live in a world where the better ideas
> > won, we wouldn't even be here. We're here because we have a head full
> > of better ideas than the status quo, and we want to fix the status
> > quo.
> > 
> > The bitch of it all is: without a way to give users what they actually
> > want, (never mind that Facebook is in poor taste) we're basically
> > dead. A bunch of academics, lamenting what went wrong with personal
> > computing.
> > 
> > Actually, my "worst idea ever" could really turn the tides. Build the
> > next Google Chrome using Self. Maybe as an accident the computer
> > finally gets to be a "bicycle for the mind."
> > 
> > Of course, this is all absolute crazy-talk:)
> > 
> > On Sep 16, 2014, at 4:44 AM, "Chris Double chris.double at double.co.nz
> > [self-interest]" <self-interest at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> > 
> > < blockquote type="cite">
> > 
> > On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Casey Ransberger
> > casey.obrien.r at gmail.com [self-interest]
> > <self-interest at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Haha, but that defeats the entire point. The browser must be
> > written in Self. That's how I get to fire my operating system. It
> > could be Self, it could be Squeak, but if we ever built a web browser,
> > we could seriously run on nearly bare metal and get by.
> > 
> > There's a somewhat ancient web browser written in Self. See here how
> > to load/run it:
> > 
> > <bluishcoder.co.nz/2009/07/27/displaying-images-with-self.html [1]>
> 
> 
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