Tim Berners-Lee also invented the HTTP protocol. HTTP 1.0 had the "POST" method and HTPP 1.1 added "PUT". So the read-write capability of the web was there from the beginning. TBL also said the web was meant to be read-write: "I hope I do not have to motive here the fact that the Web in general should be read-write."[1]

If we use Paul Ford's framework that the "web" was meant to be read-only documents, what's the correct intended uses for POST and PUT? The writeback specification was already present at a lower level than the <FORM> element in HTML.

But we have to look at the macro forces beyond HTTP+HTML and consider if a read-only web was realistic. Before 1989 Tim Berners-Lee protocols, older online services like Compuserve and Prodigy already let users do shopping and buy airline tickets. The underlying desire for bi-directional flow of read+write to enable transactions was proven before the www was invented. Therefore, even if TBL himself didn't put write capabilities into the spec, others (maybe Netscape Navigator or Microsoft IE) would have added that capability in as an extension which becomes a defacto standard that everyone adopts. (E.g. Industry adopts MS IE's XMLHttpRequest())

Would the world really want an open platform like HTTP+HTML to have less functionality than the closed commercial services like CompuServe and Prodigy that already had read+write?

[1] https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/ReadWriteLinkedData.html

A repository full of static documents isn't really all that interesting. That's basically a library on a computer. Even in the very earliest days of the web, people were drawn to interactivity, whether it was early online stores, web forums, or even little interactive bits like comment sections on blogs or things like livejournal.

> Originally named The Microsoft Network, it debuted as a proprietary online service on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of Windows 95.

MSN was a direct competitor to the internet (and AOL) despite Microsoft’s famous pivot a couple of months earlier [1]

> Realizing his company had missed the boat in estimating the impact and popularity of the Internet, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates issues a memo titled, “The Internet Tidal Wave,” which signaled the company’s focus on the global network.

Here in Australia, Microsoft teamed up with Telstra and tried really hard to shut down the emerging ISP scene (source: I was one of those ISPs)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up

[1] https://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/26/bill-gates-internet-t...

Well, actually there's still quite some old DNA in our genes, and we still go through various past forms as an embryo. Also we still got a tailbone despite not having a tail anymore, and a lot of similar cruft.

I wouldn't have even clicked the article if I had noticed the domain it was coming from, and I regret the time I've wasted trying to parse this garbage

My guess is even without the form field, someone would have eventually tried to hack interactivity via some "stateful" links or something.

If Berners-Lee and co had somehow adamantly defended the "web of documents" idea, interactivity and e-commerce would probably have gone through other technologies, e.g. email or IRC.

Though I think it would be interesting to imagine an alternate universe where most of the effort and development went in those technologies and not HTTP.

The web was specifically made for allowing people to submit and share content. The problem isn't that this included a way to submit content, but rather that we expect people to behave in a certain way. In practice humanity refuses to have it's behaviour to be defined and standardized. If you think something is bad because it allows people to exhibit irrational behaviour then you yourself are the one to blame for expecting people to conform to your own expectations regardless of the options made available to them.

Once you could reliably turn views into money, the web became more and more about “engagement”. Couple that with machine learning that optimizes engagement, and you know the rest.

Imagine a world limited to Windows BMP images and MS-PAINT, That's how I feel about HTML and web browsers. In that world, GIMP would seem like an impossible dream, just like the Memex does in ours.

It is possible to separate out source text, annotation, and code into separate layers, and even separate sources. You should be able to take a file, and produce 5 different views of the same file without changing it, or making a copy.

Just like GIMP, if you need a flat file, that's what Export_As is for. I want a world where HTML is obsolete old junk.

Really? MDN web docs indicate a lot of deprecated/obsolate codes.

What a bunch of BS.

To quote the late great Douglas Adams, "Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."

>Here’s the thing: If it hadn’t been <form>, it would have been another element—maybe one with a more accurate name, like <money-vacuum> or <robot-food> or <privacy-destroyer>.

This sums up pretty much the entire article in that A) the form tag allowing the web to be a two-way street for data probably would've been filled by another feature, and B) the author is really lamenting about the tracking/anti-privacy/dark pattern world that the web has become. I completely understand the frustration, but it's certainly not an element's fault, but the fault of all the various players who have evolved the web over 25-30ish years. It might be more beneficial to actually explore that than blaming an html element.

>The web was born to distribute information on computers, but the technology industry can never leave well enough alone.

That's called progress.

FWIW, I'd probably say XMLHttpRequest "caused more damage" than the form tag, but I also don't think it's all that worthy of a discussion.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

My first Web site was CRUD data entry form calling into a CGI written in C, actually.

Heck, even print technology implemented ‘forms’ technology - there is a standard UX affordance of a dotted line with scissors drawn on it to tell you that a piece of printed material supports cutting out a form, filling it and mailing it in. These forms were showing up in magazines, on cereal packets, back for over a century… the catalog industry was built on this tech.

Basically, if you create an information distribution medium, someone will turn it into a form delivery platform. It’s inevitable.