Re: Correction Re: Foreseeing the Web, was Re: CONFESSIONS OF A CHEERFULLIBERTARIAN By David Brin

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri Dec 08 2000 - 15:13:32 MST


At 12:56pm -0800 12/8/00, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>You appear to be arguing something different from me. I spoke
>specifically of "the Xanies", those involved with Project Xanadu. I
>don't see how you could factually disagree that the people working on
>Xanadu through at least 1990, all of whom I know personally, would not
>have had the reaction I suggest, more or less.

You are correct. I cannot really argue for the specific expectations
of specific people.

>How familiar are you with those people and the Xanadu code? The Xanadu
>architecture provided for "indexing" at the time of entry of data. It
>provided for royalty at byte granularity. Linear time indexing after the
>fact is *expensive*, and all of the Xanadu people I know would have
>expected any such substantial effort to have been recouped somehow.

Perhaps. But many free search engines were available by 1990. It
seems unlikely that experts in this field would have failed to
predict something that already existed. Your original claims was:

> > >On the other side of the fence: none of the Xanies would have predicted
> > >the widespread implementation and immense success and popularity of
> > >*free* search engines. Free? Are you *nuts*? :)

-- 
Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>


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