[peatmoss]

This is my favorite take—constraints can breed innovation, but usually only when the constrained system doesn’t already have a complete substitute that isn’t constrained.

I’d love to see a system that went hard on elegance. If we’re tilting at windmills, the alternative to web I’d like to see, is the fully Scheme web: S-exprs for content, DSSSL for styling, and Scheme for logic.

It was the web we’d have had in a different timeline.

[The_Colonel]

Or it could use PostScript for ... everything.

[seabass-labrax]

At that point, you have a digital fax machine that prints out a message when you you dial it.

Which beckons the question: does anyone know of or remember an automated system like this, where you rang a number and it would ring your fax machine back with a document? I like to imagine I could have made my millions on 'dial-a-newspaper' back in the 90s!

[IIsi50MHz]

> [D]oes anyone know of or remember an automated system like this, where you rang a number and it would ring your fax machine back with a document? I like to imagine I could have made my millions on 'dial-a-newspaper' back in the 90s!

There were many, though they were not seemingly used for newspapers. Generally, you subscribed to a newsletter, or were subscribed against your will to a mostly-ads-but-pretending-to-be-a-newsletter. These would arrive on your fax machine, usually on a schedule. Or you dialed another fax machine that would respond with some infopage, specs sheet, or government document (and sometimes let you choose from a published menu by entering other codes after connecting).

I was only ever on the receiving end, so don't remember the names of any of these systems. I believe the dial-a-menu faxes mainly existed on high-end machines owned by large corporations.

[The_Colonel]

> At that point, you have a digital fax machine that prints out a message when you you dial it.

Isn't that mostly what we want from internet?