Just watching a Discovery documentary on a Sunday afternoon, and stumbled upon an incredible story: the flush toilet history. Believe it or not, the first flush toilet in history, invented by a guy called John Harrington, was called… well, how many of you will guess… come on, come on, don’t by shy… YES: the Ajax.

Apparently, at that time – around 1500, 1596, to be more precise – the toilets were called “jackes”, so the inventor wanted to keep the initial semantic: “a jackes”, but rebranded a little his invention, so he called it “Ajax”. Much like, you, know: Vista for Mac OS. Rebranding.

And I couldn’t help to try a little blogging exercise, based on the meaning and functionalities of the old and the new AJAX object. So, here we go, first with the similarities:

1. The initial AJAX and the modern AJAX shares the same flowing perspective over things. You know, they help a lot with the flow. Make things smoother.
2. The initial AJAX and the modern AJAX shares the same hype: at that time, AJAX was a huge boost in social life, was like a fashion killer. So fashion killer, that it didn’t last more than several years. Actually, the old AJAX “frozen” for 200 years, until another guy invented something useful: the “S” pipe (that kept the smell from emerging). And that made the AJAX promote to the title of the toilet that we know today. So, the modern AJAX is almost the same: everybody talks about it, but it seems it just waits for that simple twist that will make it widely adopted. Or something…
3. The old AJAX was a simple method for solving a simple problem, which could otherwise raise a bunch of huge problems. New AJAX is targetting the same. Solving simple things in a simple way. Ever felt the smell of the unsolved problems by the new AJAX so far?
4. Old AJAX was more of a cultural revolution. So the new AJAX. It’s not programming, as all the functionality was there, lying behind the screen, for years. It’s just another way of using it. And this is what cultural revolutions are all about: using it in a different way…
5. Old AJAX was started as a very restrictive tool. Only the Queen and the inventor had access to such a device. New AJAX tends to keep this selective approach. It seems that only several people are using it correctly.

And now, for the differences:

1. Old AJAX and new AJAX took place in different time periods. Period.

Did I missed anything? Feel free to comment on that .

[tags]AJAX, web 2.0, flushing toilet[/tags]