

Ask HN: What are the biggest (simple) ideas in recent history of computing? - lkozma

I'm curious which ideas you would consider the most original, creative, important, influential, etc. in recent history of IT, computer science, but to keep it still a bit focused, let's restrict examples to the web.<p>I'm thinking especially of those ideas which don't need technical jargon to explain and are easily understood by everyone. Ideas that were under everyone's nose for a long time and in retrospect they are totally obvious if you ask the right question, but still they seemed like magic when they first appeared.<p>To get it started, here are three that I can randomly think of: CAPTCHAs, tags, torrents.
======
david927
This was asked recently by Alan Kay:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-
in...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-
in-computing-since-1980)

It turns out the answer is "nothing significant". Or more correctly "nothing
that's been published."

------
mgkimsal
The "blog" or perhaps "blog-inspired" things. tags are one you mentioned -
trackbacks and pingbacks are two more.

"friending" as a verb/process might be another.

