After reading Ben's excellent post, I was left with one very disturbing realization.

Everyone, Ben included, is trying to tell me what the web is, and what it isn't. This is profoundly misguided, and dangerous in my opinion, since it shows a profound lack of understanding of the world wide web's genesis, life up until now, and where it is heading.

This is one of those posts that I hate writing, since modern man has lost the knack of friendly debate and argument. I sincerely hope Ben recognizes this for what it is, a respectful disagreement to his missive, not a personal attack.

The "web" is ever changing

Lets be clear here, when people say "the web" they are not referencing the HTTP protocol, they are talking about the internet. The internet is not the HTTP protocol, but a massively networked system of nodes that HTTP, along with many more protocols and transports operate upon. This is in my opinion one of the major flaws found in Ben's thinking.

The internet is a perfect, logical place to create rich applications that could, at some point, rival that of their desktop counterparts. I have written about this before. Currently the technologies in use to make this a reality all piggy back on HTTP, but that isn't necessarily the way it will stay.

Who should decide the future?

But even if it is how things stay, who are we to say whether this is good or not. Who among us could have conceived of Gmail in 1995? Watching Movies and TV Shows from a website, hooked to our TV's in near HD quality... even 6 years ago?

The point is dear friends, that we don't have the right, nor do we deserver it, to decide for future innovators what the web, internet, interwebs, etc will be tomorrow. What would the state of our beloved web be today if we told the innovators of yesterday what they could and couldn't do? What the web could be and couldn't be?

It would be really boring, and that aint cool kids. Not cool at all.

As always leave a comment or a tweet and let me know what you think, but be civil.