One of the major failures of the modern computer science age (among others) is a lack of direction away from traditional i/o. We still are stuck on files and directories and tcp sockets. Yet what we actually want to do with i/o is not read a file from a local disk, or connect to a server and transmute the contents of the file over some additional protocol.<p>What we really want is to store some data somewhere, and later be able to retrieve it, without necessarily knowing what it was we stored or where or how. And we don't want to think about what server it's on, or what hard drive, or what folder. And we don't want to think about client protocols or query languages.<p>All of that would be possible if we reinvented i/o. Basically, just imagine what you want your experience to be, and then start making up names for functions that do that. Stuff that in a kernel, or a standard library. Now you have i/o that's based on how you really want to use data. The backend implementation of it can vary, but the point is to make the user experience what we actually want rather than what somebody else thinks is practical. Make the data interface you want to use, and make it a standard.