When the web came about I remember thinking, "cool we get another chance to put publishing back in the hands of people". I did not think "we're having an information revolution". If you've read James Gleick's //The Information// every innovation in the distribution of information is hailed as a revolution, but they are all rather the same: A new medium expands opportunities for the creation and distribution of messages, reaching larger populations. The apparent revolution is a product of speed and scale, not behavior.

The 20th century has a history of pushing these new media out to the masses and then consolidating them back to central or corporate control. How the 21st century will be remembered remains to be seen: The corporatization and centralization of media alongside the tendency towards mediocre, lowest common denominator small talk could lead to the devaluing of learning and intellectual exchange. There are, of course, bright lights but many are simply the result of statistics: If there is a huge amount of information, inevitably some of it will be excellent.

When TiddlyWiki came to life it was pretty good at providing information management and publishing for a single person. It was not excellent at doing the same for groups, or on the public internet. TiddlyWeb was developed to fix those gaps.