> The web: couldn't you just transfer a file to an open port and use a rendering tool to view it?
Did anyone actually ever say this? The web was clearly a technological advancement that most tech people realized out of the gate.
> Wikis: couldn't you just update a web page?
It was pretty obviously apparent with wikis that letting anyone update the page, from the browser, was a cool technological achievement. I was well into my tech career at this point and don't remember anyone reacting to wikis this way.
> youtube: couldn't you just upload a video and use tags for search?
I mean, these are getting ridiculous. When YouTube came out video sharing was a major PITA, a pain that hit most technical people, too.
I just don't buy GP's premise because all of the examples seem like something only "Tech Support Guy" from those old SNL skits would say.
> Did anyone actually ever say this? The web was clearly a technological advancement that most tech people realized out of the gate.
I don't get why we're even talking about it. The original example is nonsense. The web literally does what that example says - pushes byte streams to computers that use a rendering tool to view them.
Arguably, what made the web popular wasn't HTTP per se. The two core ingredients were, in my opinion, DNS infrastructure and that "rendering tool", AKA. web browser. Together, they made it easy to publish files and let random people access them. Arguably, the third leg would be the <A> tag in early HTML, which kept everything glued together while it expanded exponentially.
Not all though, for all I know this was an unusual perspective even among technically savvy people. I suppose the people who saw the possibility and could act in it were both technical but capable of seeing things outside that narrow lense.
Also remember I wrote these as examples of things I reasoned incorrectly about!
EDIT - re-reading my comment above, I see I did write "technical people" rather than "me". I'm sure I'm not at all alone in having this tendency, but I'm definitely not ready to defend the idea that this is a universal or even common tendency among technical people. Perhaps I should have written "when I find myself thinking "couldn't you just""...
Hosting videos back then required plugins on the part of the viewer, which was something we were all cautioned not to download because of security.... Youtube was the first site that broke through the ice and had enough content to start taking advantage of network effects, and didn't blow that lead.
That is, at least, if my knowledge of the series of events is off. Livejournal existing is about when I got into the web but that predated blogs (and particularly bloggers in the context of investigative journalism) becoming a term by quite a fair bit.
I remember getting into a few people's web-based online diaries in the late '90s and definitely some folks used geocities to host their journals. I remember using it myself to post whatever nonsense I was doing to share with friends.
the web: I was a teen when people started using local "freenets" to connect to a text-only web and I think most people who tried it were amazed that you could instantly view content somebody on the other side of the world put up
blogs: I suppose "blogging platforms" were things you could say "couldn't you update a web page" but I think it was clear that what they provided was network effects you couldn't get from just your own web page and easy styling
wikis: I remember the idea being amazing because you could edit the page without having to sign in or create an account. That's not something you could just do with "updating a web page"
youtube: it was amazing that you could easily stream videos for free and search them. There was also a ton of copyright stuff in the early days.
Really, a better way to look at whether a technology is worth paying attention to is to ask "what can this allow us to do more easily that we couldn't before?"