Why did Alan Kay say, "The Internet was so well done, but the web was by amateurs"?
- by kalaracey
OK, so I paraphrased. The full quote:
The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs. -- Alan Kay.
I am trying to understand the history of the Internet and the web, and this statement is hard to understand. I have read elsewhere that the Internet is now used for very different things than it was designed for, and so perhaps that factors in.
What makes the Internet so well done, and what makes the web so amateurish?
(Of course, Alan Kay is fallible, and no one here is Alan Kay, so we can't know precisely why he said that, but what are some possible explanations?)
*See also the original interview*.
