This turned out to be not a bug, but a feature: removing the requirement for permanent, stable addresses made a large-scale hypertext system something that could <i>actually be implemented</i>. (Unlike Xanadu.)<p>Here we are, more than twenty years later, and a hypertext system with permanent, stable addresses is still so rare in the real world that creating one will get you on the front page of Hacker News. The &quot;crappy&quot; Web, meanwhile, is the foundation of modern commerce, culture and communications.<p>If that&#x27;s crappy, I hope to God I can make something crappy someday.