Was in the right place at the right time to write the story, says he.
1995: “we must write the story before everyone forgets…”
James expected it to be a dull boring story. Big surprise! You can’t just tell the story of the Web, because you have to tell the story of hypertext, and the story of computing networks, personal computing… it’s all linked.
Back to July 1945: Vannevar Bush, calculating machine. Was frustrated with the way human mind associated things, randomly. Machines might be able to select by association… “As we may think”. Hypertext.
Doug Engelbart. Screenshot! 60’s, personal computing.
1960’s: packet switching, ARPANET (world’s first LAN).
Other things need to happen before somebody could build the web on top of them.
Louis Pouzin, 70s. Network + network + network = network. That was in fact the definition of an internet.
Sam Fedida. 80s: Viewdata — Prestel, CEEFAX, Minitel. (Historical dead-en.)
Big impact in France through the Minitel. Surrounding countries got the drift. The web, however, took some time to pick up in France, because it had to displace the Minitel. First e-mail sent by a head of state, Queen of England.
Where does the CERN fit in?
70s: CERNET; 80s: the Internet.
A place established to bring people together. TCP/IP. To communicate with the american government, had to network with them in the way they wanted (=>TCP/IP).
Magic ingredient: a consultant noticed there was a lot of information on lots of computers which weren’t talking to each other. The idea of the web is to try to emulate the way we think with a computer platform.
TBL (Tim Berners-Lee): 1989-1991, from vague to less vague, but always exciting.
Web 1.0 or Web 2.0? First browser was a browser/editor.
Next step: get it noticed out there. Students. Nicola Pellow: Web 1.1. Then around the world. 90s.
1993: the web is put in the public domain. The single thing that explains that we are using “world web” today.
Not an accident!
