I have to hand it to myself. When I mess up, I do so in style, global style.
I dismissed the biggest business opportunity on the planet.
I was blind to my inadequacy to deliver an even bigger opportunity that the world missed out on.
I figured I'd be so rich, who needs a day job?
Yeah, dumb. But not stupid. Just woefully misguided.
I sat, looking at this new technology they were rolling out. My heart fell. They'd completely missed the point.
Information was going to be trapped inside those <brackets>.
It would be absurdly difficult to find the information you needed.
In that moment, years before Google launched, I saw the search problem, and dismissed HTML.
Obviously, I'd have to invent the solution myself.
I did, and my way was always going to be better, a true global brain, but better mousetraps...
The irony is that inevitably, the world evolved as I understood it would. Silo'd information, monopoly ownership, and far worse (which I was young and naive enough not to consider), a dystopian world of narrative control.
Meanwhile, we invented and proved a technology that the world still hasn't emulated, trillions of dollars of investment into the Internet later.
A world where information flows naturally.
Fluid Data
A world where information can be contributed spontaneously, regardless of its nature.
A4
A world where further information, meta-information, if you like, can be derived from and expressed in the coherent store.
Trinity Triples
And it's all documented, or at least its core components are documented, in the patent history.
Naturally, we turn to Google for that.
As to how they contribute to a global brain, we continue that journey here.