some ideas worth to rethink: charles sanders peirce. steve peppers brings him in his text tao of topic maps in relation with semantic networks.

Semeiotic (sic!) and Logic Peirce’s settled opinion was that logic in the broadest sense is to be equated with semeiotic, and that logic in a much narrower sense (which he typically called "logical critic") is one of three major divisions or parts of semeiotic. Thus, in his later writings, he divided semeiotic into speculative grammar, logical critic, and speculative rhetoric (also called "methodeutic"). Peirce’s word "speculative" is his Latinate version of the Greek-derived word "theoretical," and should be understood to mean exactly the word "theoretical." Peirce’s tripartite division of semeiotic is not to be confused with Charles W. Morris’s division: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (although there may be some commonalities in the two trichotomies).

logicians and computer scientists from former soviet union like or dmitri pospelov got interested in the theories of peirce some decades ago and tried to find out ways in which computer programs could generate peircean hypotheses in semeiotic contexts ... through their works the thoughts of the american philosopher were brought back to the states.

somehow it would be interesting to find out what kind and why some american thinkers attracted more the east than the west. (one can argue the same happened to <norbert wiener>)

an interview with dan conolly over html, <xml>, http-ng and life at w3g.

things that didn't work out historically: browsers that enable you to edit did not make it in the marketplace. He didn't intend the Web to be static pages. It was never intended that people would write HTML by hand. No one thought people would be doing View Source--well, maybe one time out of a million.

on standards We think one of the principles of good standards work is to let lots of people do things lots of different ways, figure out which things succeed, and then bless them.

distributed software development The return on investment when you're trying to keep your technology secret is going down all the time; you have to be more and more novel for it to be cost-effective.