Upgrading the Web with Douglas Crockford

The web was originally imagined to be a simple distributed document retrieval system. It is now being used for applications that go far beyond the system's original capabilities and intentions. We have found ways to make it work, but they are difficult and far too fragile. Many times companies have offered to replace the web with superior proprietary systems, but we rejected them. We have been adding features to the web, but this does little to correct the deep underlying deficiencies, increasing instead of reducing its complexity.

This talk suggests a way forward, taking inspiration from our successful transition from NTSC to HDTV. There is a way forward to a web that is safer, easier, and as good as we desire.

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About the speaker: Douglas Crockford was born in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but left when he was only six months old because it was just too damn cold. He turned his back on a promising career in television when he discovered computers. He has worked in learning systems, small business systems, office automation, games, interactive music, multimedia, location-based entertainment, social systems, and programming languages. He is the inventor of Tilton, the ugliest programming language that was not specifically designed to be an ugly programming language. He is best known for having discovered that there are good parts in JavaScript. This was an important and unexpected discovery. He also discovered the JSON Data Interchange Format, the world's most loved data format. And he works at Paypal.