HTTP is really simple, I'm sort of surprised it (and a basic HTML-ish thing) aren't as old as FTP or SMTP. (Yes, yes, gopher, I'm not counting that :-) )
Oh, and cup holders in cars, I'm sure they could have been built with 60s technology, or even earlier :-)
HTTPI did think of that (and the web in general) as a possibility. The underlying tech is really pretty straightforward, and was way behind the then-current research understanding of hypertext systems. There certainly were HTTP/HTML-like technologies about already, many of them superior in technical terms to HTTP/HTML-as-it-was. Also remember HTML was cobbled together in SGML, which goes back to the 60s
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There certainly were HTTP/HTML-like technologies about already, many of them superior in technical terms to HTTP/HTML-as-it-was.
Well, quite.
WWW is quite a debatable example I'll grant you :-) But I suggested it because IIRC hypertext researchers spent much of the 80s trying to solve complex technical problems (bidirectional-only links being the ur-example) that weren't really tractable but seemed like an essential ingredient in one's stately pleasure dome. Lots of them were contemptuous of WWW for being simple and stupid when in fact that was exactly what was needed. So it doesn't feel like too much of a stretch to guess that we could have got to simple-and-stupid earlier.
I'm not suggesting the .com bubble in 1983, way too many things were missing. But I think there could have been some SMTP-like trajectory with WWW still exploding in popularity in the mid 90s, but existing for over a decade before that.
Lots of them were contemptuous of WWW for being simple and stupid when in fact that was exactly what was needed. Yeah, I was one of them. :-) And totally agree that worse-is-better was key to the success of the WWW. (It is funny to call it that again. I also made fun of it at the time for having a stupid, hard-to-say name that was ridiculously grandiose
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Oh, and cup holders in cars, I'm sure they could have been built with 60s technology, or even earlier :-)
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Well, quite.
WWW is quite a debatable example I'll grant you :-) But I suggested it because IIRC hypertext researchers spent much of the 80s trying to solve complex technical problems (bidirectional-only links being the ur-example) that weren't really tractable but seemed like an essential ingredient in one's stately pleasure dome. Lots of them were contemptuous of WWW for being simple and stupid when in fact that was exactly what was needed. So it doesn't feel like too much of a stretch to guess that we could have got to simple-and-stupid earlier.
I'm not suggesting the .com bubble in 1983, way too many things were missing. But I think there could have been some SMTP-like trajectory with WWW still exploding in popularity in the mid 90s, but existing for over a decade before that.
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:-)
Wikipedia says cup holders were invented in the 20s, although it does have a [citation needed], but 60s seems legit.
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