Re:HyperCard and SOA (Score 1)

You imply and interesting point that I've been thinking about for a while, and that is that computer evolution has gone down the wrong path.... I think it could have been so much better.

My experience with HyperCard taught me three important lessons:

1. Ultimate success ultimately requires Marketing. Marketing rarely exists outside a profit model. This is really a shame because great designers rarely spend time developing profit models, but rather move onward to their next important creation.

2. Power, 'Ease of Use', Security: Pick any two. Someone pointed out earlier that HyperCard could do pretty much anything on the machine and if it had become the dominant internet platform we could have had the ActiveX problem all the sooner. I dealt with it by handing my environment end-to-end (software, workstations, servers, network.) The World Wide Web necessarily developed very little power in either the html pages or the browser.

3. There are lots of brilliant implementation being developed that will never reach the public's attention. However, truly brilliant solutions are brilliant because they fit a niche. I see HyperCard's influence all the time now, but the features are often decoupled to fit a slightly new environment.

Following your metaphor "computer evolution has gone down the wrong path", think of convergent evolution, like where marsupial rabbits evolved in Australia. HyperCard was a brilliant Classic Mac OS solution. We have a new computing environment now, and eventually we'll have something to fit HyperCard's niche. If we ever have a "Web 3.0" it will likely be the successor.