The beginning of the web was an interplay of abstract vision and concrete implementation.

· Bits and Bobs 5/26/25
  • The beginning of the web was an interplay of abstract vision and concrete implementation.
    • Ted Nelson had an abstract and idealized vision for the web but got frustrated trying to make it happen.
    • Tim Berners Lee was aware of the full vision, but created a very specific tool focused on the niche of documentation for a dozen physicists.
    • Pretending that it was smaller to build something viable.
    • But because it was open ended it could grow to eclipse the starting use case.
    • Tim understood the potential of the web, but didn't distract customers with it.
    • One of the big unlocks was having 404 pages.
      • Ted's system wanted to never have broken links, which required bi-directional synchronization.
      • Tim added 404 pages, which acknowledged broken links would happen, and that was OK.