I'm having trouble putting into words the kind of inspiration that Ward Cunningham gives me. His original Wiki (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb) might seem really outdated and a bit obtuse at first, but then you realize how good it really is, and can get lost in it for hours.
The fact that he's an old-school hacker and is still building innovative things is really cool. I kind of want to call him a living fossil, but I think that might have some connotations. He contributes new ideas in a timeless way.
Right, when looking back. :) As a participant in the original wiki, I remember it felt very innovative at the time. Back then, the Internet was a one-way street: something you read.
Interesting to see Ward 'discover' a new wiki variant (listen how often he states that the software he is writing 'wants to be X')
I am not really familiar with it, but I think this could be called 'pragmatic Xanadu' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). It will be interesting of this will be successful, or whether it will eventually run into the deep problems that project Xanadu thought it had to solve to be successful.
It seems that Ward is looking for a pattern in the code and context of the web, the same way that Michelangelo was searched for the sculpture in the stone.
"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”. [1]
It also seems to me that he is keeping the Law of Demeter [2] in mind as well.
This is fantastic. It would be nice to combine this with some of Bret Victor's work on mathematical interfaces, see his essays Scrubbing Calculator [1] and Magic Ink [2].
Yeah, I agree. It would be great to be able to go through a federated wiki, combine data from multiple stories into a single calculated story, and then see how they relate.
This software seem still immature now. seems very similar to tiddlywiki.com which is very mature. Federation is a special feature of tiddlywiki though, whereas Ward's work is exciting because it is designed for it from the ground up.
Does this remind anyone else of Wave? Except that here federation apparently actually works. I love this kind of thing; I hope it does better than Wave did.
I want to ask the same question. I have the feeling there's something very interesting here but my mind is failing to see what it is. I feel like someone from the 60's watching the mother of all demos and not quite understanding what's going on. What are the use cases?
The fact that he's an old-school hacker and is still building innovative things is really cool. I kind of want to call him a living fossil, but I think that might have some connotations. He contributes new ideas in a timeless way.