Hypertext and Our Collective Destiny

The text of a fascinating talk given by Tim Berners-Lee back in 1995, at a gathering to mark the 50th anniversary of Vannevar Bush’s amazing article As We May Think. The event also drew together Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and Bob Kahn!

Thanks to Teodara Petkova for pointing to this via the marvellous Web History Community Group.

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Internet Artifacts

I love this timeline of internet firsts. Best of all:

You may touch the artifacts

The websites on display work—even the ones that used Flash!

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How to fix the internet | MIT Technology Review

We’re in a rare moment when a shift just may be possible; the previously intractable and permanent-­seeming systems and platforms are showing that they can be changed and moved, and something new could actually grow.

The fix for the internet isn’t to shut down Facebook or log off or go outside and touch grass. The solution to the internet is more internet: more apps, more spaces to go, more money sloshing around to fund more good things in more variety, more people engaging thoughtfully in places they like. More utility, more voices, more joy.

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www91.pdf

This is the flyer that Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau distributed at the Hypertext 91 Conference—the one where their submission was infamously rejected.

The WWW project merges the techniques of information rerieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.

The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. lt aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.

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Design Principles For The Web - Jeremy Keith - YouTube

Here’s the video of the talk I gave at Web Dev Conf in Bristol recently. I think you can tell that I had fun—it was a good audience!

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Who is web3 for? • Robin Rendle

Thoughts from Robin, prompted by the Web History podcast I’m narrating and the other Robin’s notes on web3 that I linked to:

Who is the web for? Everyone, everywhere, and not only the few with a financial stake in it. It’s still this enormously beautiful thing that has so much potential.

But web3? That’s just not it, man.

Exactly! The blinkered web3 viewpoint is a classic example of this fallacious logic (also, as Robin points out, exemplified by AMP):

  1. Something must be done!
  2. This (terrible idea) is something.
  3. Something has been done.

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Publishing The State Of The Web

There’s a video and a transcript of the talk.

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Questions and answers from the opening talk of an online conference.

The Weight of the WWWorld is Up to Us by Patty Toland

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