Linda and the Web
Mark Baker believes that something very Linda-like — the World Wide Web — changed the world. I’ll assert that the Web changed the world, no problem. I fail to see how this claim is true, though, since I don’t particularly see the Linda (tuple spaces) approach actually being used in the way the Web is (mostly) used today.
True, there’s the uniform interface idea, which is in action even when I use my web browser to buy a book at Amazon.com. I don’t see the spaces idea applied in program-to-program interaction very much, though. That’s not to say that it would be a bad idea, on the contrary. It’s just not this aspect that made the Web the success it is, IMO.
At least one vendor is very heavily moving in this direction, though; I’m very curious in how this will work out.