[Oberon] letter to ETHZ

[Colby Russell]

On 7/9/24 08:40, Skulski, Wojciech wrote:
 > Somewhat sad for a computer department, is it not?

It's fair to say that it's rather what you should expect to come.

Institutions are inured to the preservation of knowledge.  It's more or
less what they're for--torchbearers of past accomplishments in the
production of human knowledge (and at the upper end, producers of new
works in that vein).

The World Wide Web, although necessarily a technological invention found
under the tent of computing, is rooted in that same tradition, which
belongs more to the humanities than it does to makers of computer
software and hardware; TBL belongs with those who gave us footnotes,
indices, and the modern codex with numbered pages.  Indeed, the makers
(and purveyors) of software have done such a poor job that people would
generally rather compromise on the institutions' mission than deal with
the frustrations that arise out of trying to deploy and maintain
computer systems that would actually permit, as a matter of course,
long-term access to the resources available today, in line with TBL's
vision for the Web.

cf <https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI>

Throw in the general reckless disregard that people in the field of
computing and other technologists have for anything more than 2 years
old, and it's--like I said at the top--something you should expect from
this corner of the modern world, absent any intervention of the sort
that happened here.

-- 
Colby Russell