You say you want a revolution:
embracing a living system

@briankardell

Once upon a time... 

• TIMBL: HTML is an application of SGML (20 tags)
  • No images, forms, scripting or formatting
  • No Standards Body

Here's what we need...

~1990

Number of Websites: 1
Number of Browsers: 1
Number of Standards Orgs: 0

Implementation as per spec

Not implemented

Implementation differs from spec (unique )

Implementation differs from spec (interop)

Other colors indicate vendor feature

caniuse if it existed ~1990

Those were heady days...

1992

22 websites and 7 Browsers

Date: Tue, 1 Dec 92 16:52:50 +0100

From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Message-Id: <9212011552.AA01907@www3.cern.ch>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Lets keep the web together


- CERN distributes a WWW protocol/parser library.
- Tony Johnson is extending the MidasWWW code the other protocols.
- Dave Ragget is writing a completely new browser.
- Jim WhiteScarver is "going beyond the scope of WWW".
- So are lots of others.
- Dan Connolly is writing a definitive HTML engine for the new spec,
- Dan was also making a parallel version of Midas.
- At CERN, somone (else) is making a modified viola,
- Pei Wei works on a new Viola with completely new parts.

This is all great, except for two things: consistency and support.

Getting the protocol code and parsing code right and tracking bugs and external  
changes will be some work, I feel that it is important that we do end up with  
common code.

I know what it is like to have to maintain code on lots of platforms.
You have to write the code specially. There are W3 code style guidelines in the  
web which say what we found out to be necessary.  It's a pain. Noone is going  
to support 8 parsers on 12 platforms.

I am therefore a little worried about the proliferation of implementations.
(I know, I'm rather pleased about it too! :-) I would like to see one or maybe  
two definitive libraries around (two, so to test the first one for  
self-consistent bugs), but not four. I feel that if there are too many, then  
there will be cases of little things which work on one but not on the others,  
because there is not enough support effort for each. And we want to keep the  
quality high, in terms of reliability, conformance, and portability.
The smarts are all very well. So could I encourage everyone with a bit of  
motherhood and apple pie.

If you are thinking of a smart extra to EITHER HTTP or HTML then please define  
it and discuss it here on www-talk.  Don't try just to get it out before the  
next guy. He is probably doing it too, a different way, and theese are all  
exciting ideas which benefit from being hacked around on the net.

When the idea has come out, we can put it into a tentative "future" spec
for comment and everyone can work from it.

There is more than plenty of work for everyone out there!  With all this drive  
we are going to accomplish some incredible things over then next few months.
We don't need to be over-competitive, and we need to try to get things right  
first time.

Jim's comment system is neat, and I'd like to adopt it here too.

Tim

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/0134.html

Unsurprising:
This is how things evolve and communication really happens

1993

130 websites and 12 Browsers

1994

• Websites: ~2800
• Browsers: 16
• Standards Orgs: 1

Let's rein it in guys...

Before

After

So many people

Wow.

Look what I can do!

• Selection by authors makes pages
• Selection by users makes audience
• Selection by audience creates demand
• As in nature, selection of DNA is by effect.

Standards Body...

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

University of Research

Agency on Beauracracy

Aim:
Bring together

diverse interests to 

work on a common

problem

Initially they had so many raw materials...

So many people

Wow.

Look what I can do!

Standards Body Innovation

Giagianticus Corp

Proposal: Let's do X like this.

Day 1

RE: Proposal: Let's do X like this.

No, how about like this.

Warez 'R' Us

Day 2

Standards Body Innovation

Warez 'R' Us

Giagianticus Corp

Day 2000

Standards Body Innovation

University of Research

Day 2001

RE: RE: RE: "Proposal: Let's do X like this" is dumb

Just getting caught up. 
This isn't meta enough, humans can potentially still understand it.
What about obscure use case Z?

Standards Body Innovation

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

University of Research

Agency on Beauracracy

YAY
WE HAVE A STANDARD
"XWTF"

Day 8041

Standards Body Innovation

Web Developer
(reading news)

YAY!

Web Developer
(reading details)

(I think...)

Web Developer

(reading spec, trying to use)

ummm...

Web Developer

(spent a long time trying to use)

!@#$%#
Let's use HTML, REST & JSON

Meanwhile

Not quite a standards body

Giagianticus Corp

Warez 'R' Us

Aim:
Bring together

important interests to 

work on a common

problem without
getting too crazy

about it

The Decider

Giagianticus Corp

Proposal: Let's do X like this.

Day 1

Initially they had so many raw materials...

So many people

Wow.

Look what I can do!

The Decider

I did N like this...

Megacorp

No one asked us, we refuse.

re: I did N like this...

Unimpressed

~2011: We're doing it wrong.

Web Developer

Web Developer

Web Developer

Web Developer

Web Developer

Man, this is broken.

Step 1

Discover the DNA

(...and chromosomes and genes)

"Fundamental Primitives"

Look for answers in the existing platform.

Variance and Selection are features

the problem is that it is baked in 

How do we tap into the ultra important "selective powers"

"Tighten the feedback loop"

Prollyfills:

Introducing mutations

in natural fashion

But where do they come from?

How can you manage this at scale? 

Chapters:
Model A More Natural System

VT

NY

US

CA

AZ

London

Paris

Vienna

Local groups of people

Let's look at a proposal

Faculty

Practitioners

Standardistas

It's noisy but has
real world value
to participants

Students

• How hard is it to understand?
• What do you think of the idea?
• Is there a prollyfill?
• Can we build one?  Submit it?
• Can we add tests?
• Can we use these in our real lives?
• What information here can we distill?

• Noise is managed
• Education happens
• We can collect hard "selection" info
• We can make the ecosystem better