Re:25 years, not 10 (Score 1)

By "evil" I presume you mean "bad for privacy," but this is a non-issue if you control your own personal data repository on your own server in your own basement. To fully reap the benefits of ubiquitous internet access, all your data must be somewhat centralized. (For a large business, this centralization may, of course, be logical not physical) So my take would be "centralize the data, distribute the processing."

Aha, so you advocate exactly the same kind of logical fabric that I do. You just call it 'ubiquitous access' and you're not quite sure how it will play out at the tech level.

It's the function of the tech layer (the physical computation layer) to provide storage (with associated risk) and computation (with associated load). Everything else, like logical location of data and even privacy, can be provided in a higher layer. Since everything that the tech layer provides is merely necessary (but bad) we don't want to centralize this layer (ie, centralize risk and load) but distribute it. It's only the higher layer that we want to centralize.

In particular, the DNS / Web way of addressing resources based on their physical tech location is something we want to do away with. Though whatever does away with DNS will have to provide substantially more advantages than the minimal ones provided by URNs. It will have to be a revolutionary step up, not an evolutionary step forward.

Dynamic as in "what you see is what you want/need" rather than static GUIs that somebody designed with specific use cases in mind. (not that there isn't a place for both..)

In general, you can go the scripted route, or you can go the direct manipulation route. DM ought to be automated for consistency. And it's generally useful for it to be reflexive, though how much reflexion doesn't blow the user's mind is debatable.

I'm always open to new ideas, but what currently exists to replace it? With the amount investment into XML family tools at this point and the amount of unity XML related projects are bringing, a successor would have to be something dramatically better to be worth throwing everything out and starting over.

There's only one solution, Kill The Web. If you kill the web, you take away the entire foundation upon which XML is based and you can create a new foundation however you please. This is actually feasible even in the short term (5-10 years). All it takes is a small team of programmers creating the next revolutionary step up. And this is believable if you appreciate that in design terms, software systems are suboptimal in the 'order of magnitude' range, and that there is a pool of severely underutilized design talent that you can tap into.

At this point I would enjoy continuing this conversation more privately. My email address is p.r.o.m.e.t.e.u.s.5.7.@y.a.h.o.o.c.a. Pity slashdot doesn't have double-blind private exchange.

My regards, I'm rather enjoying this meeting of minds. :)