Profile picture
Chris Dixon @cdixon
, 5 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
1/ There have been many great software-related forum posts over the years. Some favorites…
2/ Tim Berners Lee, proposing the World Wide Web in 1991.

“The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone.”

groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/…
3/ Linus Torvalds proposing Linux, also in 1991.

“I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”

web.archive.org/web/2010010421…
4/ Marc Andreessen proposing images for web browsers, in 1993.

“I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag: IMG"

1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-…
5/ And, of course, Satoshi proposing Bitcoin, 10 years ago today.

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without the burdens of going through a financial institution“

article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.enc…
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to Chris Dixon
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Related threads

Profile picture
It’s Friday but we know that for many @se_railway
passengers, it’s not been a happy one, after problems at #Lee and #Lewisham
last night. Many people have asked us about #Lewisham so here is a VERY LONG
THREAD with some colourful diagrams to leaven the technical detail. 1/
#Lewisham is the confluence of several routes + the pic
below is the immediate area. The track and signalling dates from the 60s-70s and it has been busy in all that time. Control has been moved to Three Bridges and the kit is constantly being maintained and worked on. 2/
Because of its location, trains through Lewisham can
suffer delay caused elsewhere and congestion builds as trains queue
for a slot onto the London Bdg approach (pic). That part of the railway is reliable now and congestion caused by problems
elsewhere is the issue there. 3/
Read 10 tweets
Profile picture
Tim Berners-Lee, after spending decades creating the semantic web, has finally realized that making everything on the internet permanent and easily analyzed by corporations is a bad idea.



I wrote about this many years ago and my prediction was right:
My basic premise was that if the Semantic Web took off it would be nothing but a treasure trove of easily mined information to exploit and being permanent ("cool URLs never change") made it worse.

Fast forward and what's the most practical Semantic Web? Facebook's OpenGraph.
Facebook's OpenGraph was exploited in the exact way I said it--and other "semantic web" style systems--would be by Cambridge Analytica and many other corporations. Making it easy to traverse graphs of people's data does them no good and only benefits companies and marketers.
Read 8 tweets
Profile picture
1/ This is a tweetstorm of the major milestones & inventions in the history of information technology. From the best book I've found on the subject, Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages by Alex Wright. Affiliate link: amzn.to/2qy1THY
2/ There's two major dualities that Wright identifies weaving through this history: between hierarchies & networks, each one disrupting and then giving rise to the other; and oral vs written culture, each one setting the stage for innovations in the other
3/ Invention#1: Symbolic thought. Seems to have arisen in humans about 45k years ago, during period of rapid climate change. One theory says that scarce resources required humans to form tighter groups for cooperation & competition. Symbolic thought arose for social dynamics
Read 143 tweets
Profile picture
1/ Urbit is attempting a full-fledged operating system and peer-to-peer networking protocol to upgrade both modern computing and the web.

2/ Urbit aims to eventually replace Mac OS, Windows, etc. It’s currently a cross-platform executable that runs within Linux, Windows, or Mac. The project has been in development since 2002.

3/ Both Urbit and Inrupt aim to give users the ability to own and control their own data, instead of user data being owned and controlled by large corporations like Facebook and Google.
Read 23 tweets
Profile picture
1. In this thread, I pull out the interesting facts I learned from the incredible Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil. I’d pitch it as a quantitative Sapiens - one of the best books I've read in ages
2. Opening lines: “Energy is the only universal currency: one of its many forms must be transformed to get anything done. ‘We can think thoughts wildly, but if we do not have the wherewithal to convert them into action, they will remain thoughts’ – Richard Adams”
3. @ProfFeynman – “It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount”
Read 42 tweets
Profile picture
If you want to kill people, the most effective way to do this in the modern era (since gun laws and annoying people like the Police will make things awkward) is to persuade people to stop (or never start) a statin.

Over the long term, 1 in 10 will be killed by that choice.
You can even write books about it and make money.
And be seen as a crusader against a crooked medicogovernmental conspiracy.
The internet is a good place to operate, because most lay people can't distinguish scientific reasoning from pseudoscience, and because ...
Excellent question from Arnab:
Read 222 tweets

Trending hashtags

#LasVegasShooting #ExhibitA #TreasonSummit #DoctorsAreDickheads #TrumpTrain #MKultra #redpill #walkaway #Yarmouk #DuskNetwork #Britain #GeminiLife #Elastos #salvadorlarroca #Taurus #BDS #Diar #MARKETProtocol #reportage #France #EOS #BancorX #ChronicPain #NotGoingToBeEasy #T

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member and get exclusive features!

Premium member ($30.00/year)

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!