Locationless Web

'The web is read by people who don't need or, often, want to know about FTP and NFS - or even WWW!' - http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/NoMechanics.html

Having to think up page names, file names, all sorts of names, is irritating. Sometimes, one want to just create content for the time being - create content, and not worry necessarily about how it fits into other data. What if URIs were all automatically generated, like some of these URI shortening services? What if web browsers came with their address bars turned off by default?

So what would be on my screen when I was ready to access some data not on my computer?

If the web were created like that from the outset, how would we communicate locations via email &c.? Telling people to Google for your name if they want to find their homepage is all well and good, but Google isn't perfect, and it wasn't even envisaged as possible on the web's inception. And recent URI (and domain name) internationalization movements show it necessary for URIs to be readable.

That's the tension when it comes to locationlessness and the web (and filesystems, for that matter). Naming by characteristics (md5, size) won't soon take over from naming by hierarchy.

- KatherynWindham