互联网本身早于1980年，但由蒂姆·伯纳斯-李提出并实现的万维网(“通过简单机制分布式超文本”)始于1989/90年。

虽然超文本的概念以前就存在(Nelson的Xanadu曾尝试实现分布式方案)，但WWW是实现分布式超文本系统的一种新方法。Berners-Lee以一种强大且易于实现的方式将简单的客户机-服务器协议、标记语言和寻址方案结合在一起。

我认为大多数创新都是以一种原创的方式重新组合现有的作品。万维网的每一部分以前都以某种形式存在过，但两者的结合只有在事后才变得明显。

我确信你现在正在使用它。

在社区支持下，翻译软件可以进行手动更正和建议，随后由人工智能机器人形成模式，最终区分并正确预测不同翻译和上下文中的歧义。

虽然谷歌Translate可能不是野兽，但它是一个系统的母亲，或者可能是等待开发的祖母。

如果你仔细想想，文本语言实际上是大脑的输入，眼睛看到文本并将图像发送到大脑，然后大脑将其转化为理解。

虽然它真正的交流(尤其是人与人之间的交流)是一个高级的话题，但基本的是输入(带上下文)->翻译->理解。

为什么我们仍然没有真正的好办法给远方的同事或不会说我们语言的伙伴发送电子邮件?这显然是第一阶段。

一旦完成，我们就可以进行实时电话翻译之类的工作了。

相反，月复一月，我们最大的智力资产被用于其他更重要的项目，比如太空研究、流星探测，或者试图证明《圣经》是错的(打哈欠)。

我们把更多的时间花在基本的实际交流上怎么样?

基础设施的改变使家庭和办公室都能接入互联网。

记录并接受了从W3C到api的标准

除此之外，我们所认为的大多数新事物都比你想象的要久远得多(例如GUI, OOP)。

回答“为什么新思想会消亡”和“如何应对”这两个问题?

I suspect a lot of the lack of progress is due to the massive influx of capital and entrenched wealth in the industry. Sounds counterintuitive, but I think it's become conventional wisdom that any new idea gets one shot; if it doesn't make it at the first try, it can't come back. It gets bought by someone with entrenched interests, or just FAILs, and the energy is gone. A couple examples are tablet computers, and integrated office software. The Newton and several others had real potential, but ended up (through competitive attrition and bad judgment) squandering their birthrights, killing whole categories. (I was especially fond of Ashton Tate's Framework; but I'm still stuck with Word and Excel).

怎么办呢?首先想到的是Wm。莎士比亚的建议:“让我们杀了所有的律师。”但恐怕他们现在装备太精良了。实际上，我认为最好的选择是找到某种开源计划。它们似乎比其他选择更好地保持可访问性和增量改进。但是这个行业已经变得足够大了，所以某种有机的合作机制是必要的。

I also think that there's a dynamic that says that the entrenched interests (especially platforms) require a substantial amount of change - churn - to justify continuing revenue streams; and this absorbs a lot of creative energy that could have been spent in better ways. Look how much time we spend treading water with the newest iteration from Microsoft or Sun or Linux or Firefox, making changes to systems that for the most part work fine already. It's not because they are evil, it's just built into the industry. There's no such thing as Stable Equilibrium; all the feedback mechanisms are positive, favoring change over stability. (Did you ever see a feature withdrawn, or a change retracted?)

关于SO的另一个讨论线索是臭鼬工厂综合症(参考:Geoffrey Moore):在大型组织中，真正的创新几乎总是(90%以上)出现在自发出现的未经授权的项目中，这些项目完全由个人或小团队的主动性推动(通常会受到正式的管理等级的反对)。所以:质疑权威，反抗体制。

我认为没有什么重要的东西被发明出来。但自80年代以来，人们对软件的看法发生了很大变化。那时有更多的理论家参与其中，现在你在一个程序员论坛上问这个问题。

当时的大多数想法都没有得到实施，或者即使实施了，它们也没有任何真正的重要性，因为当时的软件行业还不存在，市场营销、人力资源、开发阶段或alpha版本也不存在:)。

Another reason for this lack of inventions is the fact that most people use Windows:) dont get me wrong, i do hate M$, but look at it this way: you have a perfectly working interface, with nothing new to add to it, maybe just some new colored buttons. Its also closed enough so you wont be able to to anything with it without breaking it. Thats why i prefer open apps, this way you get more "open" people, to whom yo can actually talk, ask then questions, propose new ideeas that actually gets implemented, or at least put on an open todo-list, thus you get some kind of "evolution". You dont really see anything new because you are stuck with the same basic interface "invented" lots of years ago... did anyone actually tried ION window-manager in a production environment? It has a new kind of interface, and actually lets you do things faster, event it it looks quirky

M$, Adobe..you name it,holds lots of patents so you wont be able to base your work on them, or derivatives(you also wont know what kind of undeveloped tehnologies they hold). Look at MP3 and GIF as examples( i belive that they are both free formats now, but they are also kinda dead..) MP3 is the 'king' of audio evend if there are few algorithms out there much better that it..but didnt get enough traction because they weren't pushed on the consumer market. The GIF... come on, 256 colors??? From this point of voew i'm curios how many people from this thread are working on something "open" that will get to be reused in some other projects, and how many on "closed", protected by NDA's projects?

即使这听起来有点像“免费的威利”，但在80年代，软件是免费的，所有东西都有文档，所有硬件都更简单，更容易使用……同时也更加有限，所以人们并没有浪费时间去执行3d游戏或网页，而是致力于真正的算法。

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