A spin-off from a discussion of the Kurzweil Reading Machine.
It’s funny, but the opening of the personal computer era was a more ambitious time than the internet age. People joyed in being idealistic to a seemingly unimplementable degree, and then doing their best to implement it anyway. Some of them succeeded. Today we’re in a more professional and more capable era, but for all the boiling of the internet it is less imaginative.
original version, August 2009
added here March 2011