Here’s, briefly, my current thinking/rationale (attempt of sensemaking) around it, given that likewise, as with OGM purpose discussion threads, there are multiple proposals/invitations out there for infrastructure + tooling (might require basic research, prototyping, experimentation, iteration):
There’s no hope justified to actually build some system/infrastructure, despite there’s lots of talk about it all the time, but priorities, attention, focus, commitment, investment is somewhere else entirely. Therefore and in general, I don’t think it’s reasonable to imagine/frame such an effort to be very broad/wide or to have the goal of “replacing” the Web or compete with it, not at all. The Web is fine and great and works well for/with the things it does, like online applications (shops, games, etc.). Instead, maybe there’s more merit to identify very specific pains and target these strategically, ideally of low-effort and huge gain/benefit/leverage (“low-hanging fruit”), ideally each done as individual, independent capabilities (each small, doing one job well, quick/cheap to implement), which may cooperate/interoperate later into a larger toolset. Also, with Ted Nelson’s conception of the user being of individual genius and Doug Engelbart’s (or maybe more specifically Sam Hahn’s) notion of the single, individual, high-performance knowledge worker augmented to perform a function/role very well (collaborating within a team or not), that might be the best bet to bootstrap oneself out of the current paradigms.
Could be important to point out that I’m not proposing any more that anybody else should do anything differently or join or contribute, just want to leave with the question of what would be needed for the immense ambition that’s frequently discussed all the time, in order to have a chance to eventually get there. There’s a huge discrepancy, distance, delay between the vision and planning as well as practice to ever get there. Could also well be that it’s a great narrative/imagination, but for various reasons few/nobody want to really arrive at that particular destination and do prefer some other place(s) instead, which is also cool and fine.