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Thinking about the various means the web uses to select technologies,
they typically come down to 'the wisdom of crowds' meme (eg, PageRank,
EigenTrust) and reputations. Given the individual and therefore the
crowd tendancy to choose against the negative and affirm that which they
already believe, I don't think the web is ever capable of choosing the
best technology. It won't recognize it if it is something entirely new
and if it is old, it is seldom worth reselling. There is some threshold
where an idea or technology is not oversold but sufficiently represented
that it takes the lead and at that point, lock-in occurs even if there
are better options for some measure of better. Pachinko.
The web tends to mediocrity not excellence. It makes a good stew for
the masses but is incapable of creating an optimized application for a
narrow scope. Some work requires deep expertise, not consensus and the
web can't think that deeply on any given topic.
We have XSD because it got the most votes at the time. It's that
simple. The damming thing is, that is what the web does, not best or
worst, but simply does at all. Worse is better because that is all it
is capable of. Chalk up another win for objectivism.
len
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