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The Web That Never Was - Dylan Beattie

NDC Conferences · 95.7K views · 2018-11-13 · 1:01:46

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Overview

Dylan Beattie's entertaining NDC talk imagines an alternate history of the web, asking what if different decisions had been made on operating systems, browsers and standards. It blends real history with humor.

On Hacker News

HN commenters strongly recommend it as a fun alt-history of the web and bring it up whenever people muse about how the web could have been different.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2023–2026

Topics

Web developmentHistory of computingSoftware (other)
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web historyalternate historymicrosoftjavascriptdylan beattie

What people said

x-complexity · 2026-05 · Strong recommendation

Whenever someone talks about forking/rebuilding the web, I'll always link to my favorite Dylan Beattie talk about such a hypothetical alternative: [VIDEO]

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x-complexity · 2024-08 · Strong recommendation

Then you'll especially love Dylan Beattie's talk on this exact subject, regarding an alt-history take on the web. [VIDEO]

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AlbertoGP · 2023-12 · Strong recommendation

> I feel like more people should watch Dylan Beattle's "The Web that Never Was" presentation. Didn’t know about it, here is the video of that talk in YouTube: [VIDEO] There is a poem-style intro titled “Flatscreens / a song about code” until the talk proper starts at 5’11”: [VIDEO] Edit: I’m watching it and it is done in an entertaining style but is a bit loose on some details I know about, such as implying that the IBM PC development was started in the early 1970’s when it was in fact started in 1980. Still worth watching so far. Edit 2: finished, it is definitely worth watching. It goes into “The Twilight Zone” of a very interesting alternative history. And does a good job reporting on the Gary Kildall / IBM missed deal for their PC OS.

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Sources

Video by NDC Conferences, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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