

Tim Berners-Lee's original WWW proposal (1989) - epenn
http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html

======
seldo
"We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which
generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques
and complex extra facilities."

In other words: standards are more important than features. The utility of the
web comes from being open and interoperable.

~~~
brlewis
I saw the web in 1991. It didn't look ready to become adopted as a standard.
The fancy graphics of NCSA Mosaic helped propel it forward. The img element
was created without a standards process.

~~~
js2
"proposed new tag: IMG":

[http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0182.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-
talk.1993q1/0182.html)

~~~
rquantz
Is this meant to be a rebuttal? Or are you supporting the parent? The result
of this discussion was no agreement, if I'm not mistaken, leading to mosaic
implementing the img tag without a standard.

~~~
js2
It was neither. It's just a link to the topic at hand. But yes, IMG was
implemented w/o a standard.

~~~
rquantz
And it was quite relevant. Sorry about that -- I'm used to reading everything
here as an argument.

------
yaix
>> Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the
question - Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?

That is interesting. The LHC basically triggered the WWW.

Good argument for your next discussion with the annoying "what is all this
expensive research even good for" type of people. The LHC gave you Facebook
and YP, dude!

~~~
orblivion
That's kindof like asking, "If it weren't for this expensive building project,
nobody would have ever invented this new type of hammer". If $X buys you an
LHC and the WWW, you could spend less than $X to buy the WWW.

I think experimental physics has plenty of its own utility, though it probably
won't become relevant to engineering for decades.

My overall point is that you should account for the value of different
components properly.

~~~
Create
On values at CERN:

"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices
in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value
of Y)" [where Y>X]

source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

ISBN: 9290831693 <http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264>

Long PR story short: RPC was prevalent, that is how you control(led) your
stuff remotely. Like Tim. Today, if you'd ask for a NeXT-like toy, you'd be
denied were you an average Eastern. But western equivalent asked for it and
got one, and put the gopher link address ptr in the reserved field of the text
font properties (where things like bold and italics properties are stored) and
voilà. You can also hire a cheap student to actually write the web client to
be cross platform (its true virtue/value). Thanks to Nicola Pellow, of whom
almost nobody knows about. Would the "web" have just run on NeXT, it would be
long extinct, let alone take off.

On linking and hypertext: all post-war era stuff is spin. The real stuff comes
from Belgium:

For ADD-ers: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRN5m64I7Y>

The story: <http://www.archive.org/details/paulotlet>

[http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/forgotten_forefather_paul...](http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/forgotten_forefather_paul_otlet)

"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years
in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified
to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper

<http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en>

The answer is a nice PR story on the web --

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_(public_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_\(public_relations\)#Techniques)

------
timClicks
It's so interesting to see that the ideas of the Semantic Web came first, even
though those aspects have been hardest to find adoption.

~~~
prodigal_erik
I see it as a variation on <http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html>. What
TimBL had in mind would have been a monumentally more powerful trove of
information, but our society doesn't want one of those very badly, so it
rewarded the people who were taking shortcuts and making shiny toys rather
than contributing to that. (And I'm about as guilty as anyone else of doing
what pays.)

------
ShabbyDoo
It amuses me how the initial proposals for what turn out to be great ideas
often are so relatively narrow and small. The anecdote about the Xerox
photocopier's R&D being justified by adding up the number of secretaries and
the number of documents replicated via mimeograph comes to mind. [Sorry,
couldn't find link]

What we don't ever see are the absurdly optimistic justifications for really
bad ideas. Cuecat? Iridium satellites? The supposed future ubiquity if the
Segway? We only know about the flops which because big enough (or were hyped
enough) to have gotten publicity. Have you ever seen the abysmal nature of
business plans in a local business plan competition?

I almost included Webvan, but I'm not sure that it was an inherently bad idea
-- just one which required high adoption levels to achieve positive cash flow.
And, I didn't include things like pets.com which I suspect (without
justification) were known by their inventors as bad-but-flip-able ideas.

------
rollypolly
"Vague, but exciting.." how prescient.

------
ktizo
I have this diagram on a cern tshirt that I unexpectedly found in a charity
shop.

It is probably my geekiest wearable item, other than maybe my magnifying
soldering glasses.

