Transcription
Oh, you're here! You're all here. Let's get started. Berners-Lee wrote HTML to view and edit the web, and HTTP so that it could talk to itself. The chatter could be cacophonous; it could be deafeningly silent.
Big picture: what will the World Wide Web become? Short answer: who knows?
Okay, so what's your point? It's a waste of time to try to figure out what the web will become. We just don't know because, right now, at the end of the day, it's just an online research catalog running on Next computers on a small network in Europe.
You know, you're saying everything we've talked about since we got here has been a waste of time. I'm saying let's take a step back—literally step back.
Yeah, what is this on the board? It's the code for the web browser, and you wrote it all on the whiteboard. The online catalog of research is full of Norwegian dudes, physics papers, and particle diagrams and stuff.
Yeah, and we care about this because why? How did we all get here today? The choices we made? The sheer force of our will? Something like that.
Here's another answer: the winds of fate, random coincidence, some unseen hand pushing us along—destiny. How did we all get here today? We walked through this door. We don't have to build a big white box or a stadium or invent rock and roll. The moment we decide what the web is, we've lost. The moment we try to tell people what to do with it, we've lost. All we have to do is build a door and let them inside.
When I was five, my mother took me to the city, and we went through the Holland Tunnel. It was basic concrete and steel, but it was also my excitement sitting in the back seat, wondering when it was going to be our turn to emerge. It was the explosion of sunlight, and when we exited the tunnel, all of Manhattan was laid out before us. That was the best part of the trip—the amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending.
This is the first web browser—the rudimentary one CERN built to view and edit research. I wrote it up here for you to see how simple it is. It takes up one whiteboard. That's basic concrete and steel, but we can take this, and we can build a door. We can be the first ones to do it because right now everyone else sees this as an online research catalog running on Next on a network in Europe. With this handful of code, we can build the Holland Tunnel.
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I don't see it. I don't. I mean, is it a door, or is it a tunnel, or is it the Tower of Babel, or is it a Rosetta Stone, or is it a stadium? You can't even decide on a metaphor.
And the big idea here is the browser, and it's that easy to build. It's not a big idea at all; it's a foregone conclusion. How can we win it? Something when anyone—anyone, including Xerox and Apple and all the actual players from your little Hypertech shindig—can step in at any moment and crush us?
It will be competitive because whoever owns the door can charge admission. But I sincerely believe that with the people in this room, we have a chance to build the best lobbies. You think you have all the people in this room, Joe?