It makes it possible for extremely rapid and diverse innovation . Keeping this ability is crucial to society exploiting the potential of telecommunications and computer technology. Innovation in TV requires reimplementation of all the pieces from camera to screen. Contrast that with the Internet where my ISP and the IP stack in my PC don't know if I'm using an HTML 2.0 browser, doing transactions with XML, streaming out RealAudio, sharing a whiteboard with Netmeeting, or creating a VPN to let a local program access a disk remotely. Only the end points care .
Innovation can happen in a weekend with just some code at the end points.
That's why Tim Berners-Lee could create the basis of the World Wide Web himself so quickly and easily, and others could try it without billions in infrastructure modifications. Copyright 1999-2001 by Daniel Bricklin All Rights Reserved.