Jason Kottke: Portal Wars II: When Search Engines Attack. He makes a great point (from Robert Morris at Etech 2002): while advances on the internet are typically heralded as tech-driven, in fact they’re more often usability-driven. Examples:
Mosaic was not an advancement in technology over TBL’s original browser. Blogger is a highly-specialized FTP client. IM is IRC++ (or IRC for Dummies, depending on your POV).
Dead right. Good tech, without the rough edges sanded down, and a degree of comprehensibility, is useless.
Aside: I wonder if Robert Morris, IBM is any relation to Robert T Morris, the 1988 internet worm guy?