&gt; (Let the entire existence of the Web, with its myriad flaws, be a lesson to you: your crappiest demo may well become the thing you&#x27;re known for twenty-five years later, so make sure your crappiest demo doesn&#x27;t suck as bad as the Web does.)<p>The web is amazing, and you are using it right now. It has flaws, but so does anything that achieves success at the level the Web has. How many technologies have a direct impact on <i>billions</i> of people&#x27;s lives?<p>There are subtle reasons why &quot;crappy&quot; technology often wins. One is that worse is often better (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jwz.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;worse-is-better.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jwz.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;worse-is-better.html</a>) and the second is that people are more prone to complain about popular technologies, which create the illusion that their alternatives would <i>obviously</i> be so much better.<p>EDIT: Note that the web is not just a technological phenomena, it&#x27;s a social one. If you care about the real world, it doesn&#x27;t make sense to look at it as a technological innovation in isolation. Anyone can dream up The Perfect Protocol in a research paper, it&#x27;s an entirely different beast to actually do it and make it work for billions of people.