Simplicity

The other week, I had a sudden thought which, like any sudden thought, struck me when, where and how I was least expecting it. That is, on a Sunday, in the shower, by means of a small bottle of wildly exotic liquid soap. At first I dismissed it, but then, just the other day, it occurred again, and I felt compelled to tell the world about it.

You see, the soap to which I allude was by Original Source, a company who create soap in the way nature intended (if nature ever intended us to use soap). And it occurred to me that, all things considered, this simplicity was in surprising demand these days. Then, with my rudimentary knowledge of history, I looked back, and found that it hasn't always been this way. For centuries, in fact, fancy Renaissance and Baroque and hundreds of other complex styles have been the height of fashion. Then, with my similarly rudimentary knowledge of prehistory, I looked even further back, and found that, actually, it has been this way once before. Give a caveman a piece of flint and a big stick, and he's happy.

And then (and this is the important 'then') I thought - as I do rather too often - about the Internet, and there was the connection. Give an early Internet age programmer a means of connection and a draft HTML specification, and he's happy. Then later, everyone wants large, impenetrable code blocks that do practically nothing. But now, the time of semantic HTML has come, something that can be read by even the most backward of browsers, that actually makes sense. And I like that, which is why this momentous occasion has been immortalised in a vEvent Microformat, which I like almost as much. The age of simplicity is here for good, and I'm welcoming it.