---
title: "Web of Ideas II"
date: 2003-07-31
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2003"
    url: "/tag/2003.md"
---

# Web of Ideas II

[Lawrence Lessig](https://web.archive.org/web/20040224232823/http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/2003_07.shtml#001371) on US Presidential candidate Howard Dean’s blogging efforts:

> “Neutrality aside, though, Governor Dean has earned a special respect. Of course there are issues on which I would disagree with anyone. But I have been struck in reading these posts, and the passion they inspired. They revive a feeling I had as a kid that **ideas could matter**, and that there could be people who would make them matter.”*(emphasis and font colour mine)*

I’m from New Zealand, so I haven’t been following American politics. But that last sentence struck a chord with me, because it’s a universal concept. **Ideas do matter.**

One of the Web’s great strengths is it allows ideas to flow freely, because it is a Two-Way communications medium. Television is just one-way, books are one-way, newspapers are one-way. The Web allows ideas to be more than dead words on a page or flickering images on a screen. On the Web, an idea can travel across thousands of [nodes](https://web.archive.org/web/20040224232823/http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/n/node.html) on the Internet and take on a life of its own. The Web makes ideas come alive!

Not unrelated, [Adam Bosworth](https://web.archive.org/web/20040224232823/http://www.adambosworth.net/) has just started a blog. He used to work at Microsoft, where he played a key role in the development of Internet Explorer. So it’s great to be able to read his ideas on how the web browser should evolve. He has a concept of a “web service browser”, which [he defines as](https://web.archive.org/web/20040224232823/http://www.adambosworth.net/archives/000003.html):

> “…a browser that can access information published as XML messages by services, let the user interact in a rich and graceful way with this information or these services, but can run well in terms of interaction whether the user is online or offline. “

I will be keenly following Adam Bosworth’s weblog as he explores this fascinating idea. There have already been some interesting comments from readers. I’m looking forward to what [Scoble](https://web.archive.org/web/20040224232823/http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/) has to say 😉

As for my own much more humble contribution to the Web of Ideas, I’ve started to note down some thoughts for an ideas/topics web application. I’m currently investigating XTM Topic Maps. I’ll talk more about this later…

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/2003/07/31.html#a87))*