API Evangelist Conversation with Mike Amundsen on the Lineage of the Web, Hypermedia, Capabilities,

Mike Amundsen has been writing about hypermedia, REST, microservices, and the semantics of the web for the better part of two decades. In this conversation we walk the lineage — Paul Otlet, Ted Nelson, Wendy Hall, Leonard Richardson — through hypermedia and into the contemporary conversation around capabilities, affordances, and agentic systems. Mike makes the case that capabilities are not just an architectural pattern but a worldview: the ability to do something, made meaningful through ontology, taxonomy, and choreography. Along the way we talk about what the web has become, why microservices still matter, what "agency" really means in an agentic system, and how to stay grounded — and keep your spark — when the hype cycle pulls everyone toward whatever today's tulip happens to be.

Show notes & full Q&A: https://conversations.apievangelist.com/store/2026-05-20-mike-amundsen.html

Chapters drawn from the conversation:
- Who are you?
- What did you learn writing books across the decades?
- How do you feel about the web today?
- After a decade of microservices, what are your thoughts?
- What is hypermedia?
- What is the role of information architecture in giving us the meaning we need?
- Why is Ted Nelson a literary radical?
- Who was Wendy Hall, the steward of links?
- Who was Leonard Richardson, the collaborative realist?
- What's the role of ontology, taxonomy, and choreography in hypermedia?
- What does the word "capability" mean to you?
- Who should be in the room when crafting capabilities?
- How does all this translate into agentic systems?
- How do we reconcile traditional automation and orchestration with agentic?
- How do we help people stay grounded when the hype cycle pulls them away?
- How do you help people who don't have much control over the AI work landing on them?

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About API Evangelist: I've covered the technology, business, politics, and people of APIs since 2010 at apievangelist.com. The developer portal lives at developer.apievangelist.com.

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Видео API Evangelist Conversation with Mike Amundsen on the Lineage of the Web, Hypermedia, Capabilities, канала Kin Lane, The API Evangelist