Yesterday I mentioned that there's a push to build a common XML format and distribution system for incorporating regularly published web sites into personalized channels or automated search systems. Today I realized that that's what NNTP is for, and a lot of what I'm envisioning is just recreating the functionality of a good news client. This is another example of layering more complex functionality on top of an existing system because it feels right, but without necessarily understanding what the flaws in the existing system were, and it's causing me to step back and reconsider the social aspects in which the first protocols flourished, because it's the social engineering that makes the reimplementations different. In that light, re-reading Elf Sternberg 's call to Balkanize Usenet is a good idea.
There's something new growing out there, it's bigger than a browser and yet may use a browser for display, that will let us make the web useful, let us all publish information and provide a way for readers to sort through that information and actually use it. It's going to involve lots of micro web servers , and some language with which we can query them and control them and script them. The implementation is still just beyond my grasp, but I can feel it coming and want to make it happen.
While I'm fantasizing about where the net can grow, I'm also thinking that a central repository of changed links that could be automatically queried would be a good thing, it'd let site maintainers run a spider that kept their web sites from completely dying on outside links. The webmaster of Chattanooga On-line is reorganizing that server, and in the process I'm sure that a bunch of the net talking to my old web site is going to break, and this disturbs me. This is a grand collaborative effort, and if we don't keep up our sides by making links work forever we lose that aspect of the collaboration. The main problem seems to be security, it's been shown that the net has grown well away from the days when you could trust people to not cause mischief for its own sake. Any ideas on this?
Thursday, February 25th, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com