"In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites, instead of being dependent on a few big sites to host their online identity. In this vision, you would own your own domain name and have complete control over its contents, rather than having a handle tacked on to the end of a huge company's site. This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do.

This isn't our web today. We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich.

But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilities of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be." - Anil Dash

"IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

"Tekkies think that electronic documents and the World Wide Web are something completely new and that they own it, exactly the way every generation of teenagers thinks they've invented sex and it's their secret. But it's not new and they don't own it. Word processing and the World Wide Web are not intrinsically new.
They are literature.

What is literature? Literature is (among other things) the study and design of documents, their structure and connections. Therefore today's electronic documents are literature, electronic literature, and the question is what electronic literature people really need. Electronic literature should belong to all the world, not just be hoarded by a priesthood, and it should do what people need in order to organize and present human ideas with the least difficulty in the richest possible form." - Ted Nelson, Toward a Deep Electronic Literature"

"This is the real news of our century.

It is highly feasible to take care of all of humanity
at a higher standard of living
than anybody has ever experienced or dreamt of.

To do so without having anybody profit at the expense of another,
so that everybody can enjoy the whole earth.

And it can all be done by 1985."

- Buckminster Fuller, The World Game, 1971 (watch).

"There is too much to say and it goes in all directions."
"My religion is human creativity and human freedom."
"Everything is possible, nothing is easy."
"I mistook a clear view for a short distance."
"Everything is deeply intertwingled."
- Ted Nelson, Possiplex

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?" - Robert Browning

We are Refractory | Cornucopian

"Human progress is our cause,
Liberty of thought our supreme wish,
Freedom of conscience our mission,
And the guarantee of equal rights
To all people everywhere our ultimate goal."
- Scottish Rite Creed

life is but a stream ...