

'The Single Most Valuable Document In The History Of The World Wide Web' - jacobjulius
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/01/180255276/the-single-most-valuable-document-in-the-history-of-the-world-wide-web

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a_p
>What if the Web had been patented?

Then it would have ended up like Gopher[1]. In 1993, the University of
Minnesota announced that it would start to charge license fees to use its
implementation of the Gopher server. By 2000, when the university GPLed it, it
was too late.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29>

~~~
wwweston
> Then it would have ended up like Gopher

That's a decent guess, but I think it's also possible it would've followed the
path of one of the pre-web online services like AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, or
eWorld. Those systems are what happens when somebody owns the marketplace and
you need to get permission to set up shop, which (if the WWW took off at all)
would more or less have been the state of things while the patents lasted.

Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the realm of the app store in some
ways.

~~~
tomkin
Funny. I think I just realized that Facebook has become AOL – keywords and
all.

~~~
jacques_chester
I remember when movie trailers had AOL keywords in them. Now it's "Like
_Action Drivel_ on Facebook!"

------
guelo
Good thing the web wasn't invented in Silicon Valley.

EDIT: Wanted to add that I'm not really a Silicon Valley hater. Silicon Valley
did a lot to make the web what it is today, starting with companies like
Netscape and Sun and followed by all the dot com and Web 2.0 powerhouses.

~~~
klaut
word to that! :)

~~~
api
I thought I was the only person around here who thought The Valley was
overrated. I think its center-of-innovation days are behind it. Today it's
more where things are marketed than where they are invented, and the major
activity seems to be trying to get people to click ads.

I laugh sometimes at the popularity of things like transhumanism around the
Valley. I hear a lot of talk like that, but see little action. Trying to get
people to click ads is not going to enhance longevity or intelligence. Most of
that work is going on elsewhere, such as at major medical institutes and
universities.

~~~
hkmurakami
Our family has been in SV since the 70's, and having grown up here and having
heard stories and met people who lived through the decades here, I've sadly
come to think that we were doing a better service to the world at large in the
80's than we are today.

~~~
api
On the good side, one reason I think the Valley is overrated today is that
what the Valley _was_ has gone airborne. I see more innovation in more places.

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protomyth
The basic concept of hyperlinking had an origin at least as far back as 1960
by Ted Nelson for Project Xanadu. So, I would imagine whatever new aspect got
the patent would have been routed around. We did have HyperCard at the time,
so that might have served as a basis (as in idea, not code).

Computer Lib / Dream Machines was an interesting book, the University of North
Dakota library had a copy while I was in college (late-80's).

~~~
btilly
Actually Ted Nelson claims that hyperlinking comes from the 1945 essay
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-
ma...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-
think/303881/) which also contains the inspiration that leads to the
scientific citation index. (Amusingly Google's PageRank is what you get when
you apply the scientific citation index part of that essay to the most popular
implementation of the hyperlink part of that essay.)

Now one may wonder how Vannevar Bush was able to have such great insight into
how to make computing useful for people when computers were in their infancy.
(For instance Von Neumann's description of the Von Neumann computer
architecture came out only weeks before.) The explanation is simple - Vannevar
Bush had pretty good ideas about how to make this stuff work because he'd been
building/configuring/etc computers for almost 20 years at that point. And in
his work he'd encountered all sorts of machines that handled information,
including machines used for tabulating the census, and he'd been thinking
about the memex for about a decade.

We live in a field that likes to forget its history. There is a lot more of it
- extending back farther - than we realize.

------
narrator
I remember software development in the early 90s. Every rinky-dink software
development library was very expensive and some even required royalty payments
per license sold. Libraries that came with development environments were
insignificant. Everyone wanted to charge for everything. Free software was a
novelty that nobody could understand because, after all, how where the authors
making money on it?

~~~
marshray
They weren't _all_ expensive, many were very affordable for commercial
developers. But you had to pay the money up front without very little idea
about the suitability or quality. Then if you went with the library, you had
to live with the author's own personal ideas about what your business
relationship should be.

------
noonespecial
Remembering this is almost like a ward against cynicism. My world is much
better because someone did the right thing.

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l0c0b0x
I'm printing that document, and hanging it on my wall.

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canadev
If the web was patented, just maybe someone would have come up with a
stateful, non-markup solution (or at a least _better_ markup solution) to
supplant it :)

~~~
protomyth
perhaps like a networked HyperCard with downloadable stacks?

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rocky1138
This is one of those rare instances where a statement like 'The Single Most
Valuable Document In The History Of The World Wide Web' is not hyperbole.

~~~
marshray
I think it's at least a little hyperbolic. Even the article says explicitly
"There might be a bit of hyperbole in that statement."

~~~
spinlock
You'd have to think that something like google.com is the most valuable page.

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Natsu
Thanks to this, they will go down in history as the inventors of one of the
most important technologies in human history.

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DigitalSea
If the Internet were patented, I have no doubt that someone would have spawned
their own version of it (perhaps with a few differences to prevent a lawsuit)
and CERN's version would have failed much like Gopher did. The Internet is a
perfect example of an instance where a patent would have stifled innovation
not spurned it.

~~~
eurleif
The Web.

------
billions
The web, in one form or another would have happened regardless. Intellect is
limited by the speed of networking brains.

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skcin7
Hard to imagine it was 'only' 20 years ago. Can you imagine what will come 20
years from today, in 2033?

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general_failure
And here we are trying to replace the web with apps.

