Well we all know the World Wide Web has absolutely transformed publishing, broadcasting, commerce and social connectivity, but where did it all come from? And I'll quote three people: Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee. So let's just run through these guys.
Vi vet alle at World Wide Web har snudd opp ned på publikasjoner, sendinger, reklame og sosiale nettverk, men hvor kom alt dette fra? Jeg skal sitere tre mennesker: Vannebar Bush, Doug Engelbart og Tim Berners-Lee. Så la oss kikke litt på disse mennene.
This is Vannevar Bush. Vannevar Bush was the U.S. government's chief scientific adviser during the war. And in 1945, he published an article in a magazine called Atlantic Monthly. And the article was called "As We May Think." And what Vannevar Bush was saying was the way we use information is broken. We don't work in terms of libraries and catalog systems and so forth. The brain works by association. With one item in its thought, it snaps instantly to the next item. And the way information is structured is totally incapable of keeping up with this process.
Dette er Vannevar Bush. Vannevar Bush var myndighetene i USA's vitenskapelige hovedrådgiver under krigen. Og i 1945, publiserte han en artikkel i bladet Atlantic Monthly. Artiklen het "As We May Think." Og det Vannevar Bush sa var at måten vi bruker informasjon på er ødelagt. Vi arbeider ikke med tanke på biblioteker eller katalogsystemer og lignende. Hjernen fungerer ved tilknytning. Med en gjenstand i tankene, hopper den umiddelbart til neste. Og måten informasjonen er strukturert på klarer ikke å holde følge med denne prosessen.
And so he suggested a machine, and he called it the memex. And the memex would link information, one piece of information to a related piece of information and so forth. Now this was in 1945. A computer in those days was something the secret services used to use for code breaking. And nobody knew anything about it. So this was before the computer was invented. And he proposed this machine called the memex. And he had a platform where you linked information to other information, and then you could call it up at will.
Han foreslår så en maskin, og kaller den memex. Og memex skal koble informasjon, en bit av informasjonen relateres til en annen bit av informasjon, og så videre. Dette var i 1945. En datamaskin på den tiden var noe som de hemmelige byråene brukte for kodeknekking. Og ingen visste noe om det. Dette var før datamaskinen var oppfunnet. Og han foreslo at denne maskinen skulle kalles memex. Han hadde en plattform hvor man koblet informasjon til annen informasjon, og så kunne du hente det opp av deg selv.
So spinning forward, one of the guys who read this article was a guy called Doug Engelbart, and he was a U.S. Air Force officer. And he was reading it in their library in the Far East. And he was so inspired by this article, it kind of directed the rest of his life. And by the mid-60s, he was able to put this into action when he worked at the Stanford Research Lab in California. He built a system. The system was designed to augment human intelligence, it was called. And in a premonition of today's world of cloud computing and softwares of service, his system was called NLS for oN-Line System.
Vi ruller fremover i tid, en av de som leste denne artikkelen var en fyr ved navn Doug Engelbart, og han var en amerikansk luftforsvarsoffiser. Og han leste dette i luftforsvarets bibliotek i midtøsten. Han ble så inspirert av denne artikkelen, den satte på en måte kursen for resten av livet hans. Innen midten av 60-tallet var han i stand til å bruke dette i praksis da han jobbet ved Stanfords forskningslaboratorium i California. Han bygget et system. System var designet for å utfylle menneskets intelligens, ble det sagt. Og med en liten anelse om dagens samfunn med nettskyer og programvare, kalte han system NLS, for oN-Line System.
And this is Doug Engelbart. He was giving a presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in 1968. What he showed -- he sat on a stage like this, and he demonstrated this system. He had his head mic like I've got. And he works this system. And you can see, he's working between documents and graphics and so forth. And he's driving it all with this platform here, with a five-finger keyboard and the world's first computer mouse, which he specially designed in order to do this system. So this is where the mouse came from as well.
Og dette er Doug Engelbart. Han holdt en forelesning ved Fall Joint Computer Conference i 1968. Det han viste -- han satt på en scene som dette, og demonstrerte dette systemet. Han hadde mikrofon, slik som meg. Og han viser dette systemet. Som dere kan se, jobber han seg gjennom dokumenter og bilder og så videre. Han kjører alt med denne plattformen her, et 5-fingers tastatur og verdens først data-mus som han designet spesielt for å bruke på dette systemet. Dette er altså hvor musen kommer fra.
So this is Doug Engelbart. The trouble with Doug Engelbart's system was that the computers in those days cost several million pounds. So for a personal computer, a few million pounds was like having a personal jet plane; it wasn't really very practical.
Så dette er Doug Engelbart. Problemet med Doug Engelbarts system var at datamaskinene på den tiden kostet mange millioner pund. Så for en PC, ble et par millioner pund som å ha et personlig jetfly; det var ikke spesielt praktisk.
But spin on to the 80s when personal computers did arrive, then there was room for this kind of system on personal computers. And my company, OWL built a system called Guide for the Apple Macintosh. And we delivered the world's first hypertext system. And this began to get a head of steam. Apple introduced a thing called HyperCard, and they made a bit of a fuss about it. They had a 12-page supplement in the Wall Street Journal the day it launched. The magazines started to cover it. Byte magazine and Communications at the ACM had special issues covering hypertext. We developed a PC version of this product as well as the Macintosh version. And our PC version became quite mature.
Vi går videre til 80-tallet da PC'ene ankom, noe som ga plass for hans system med PC. Og min bedrift, OWL, bygde et system kalt "Guide for the Apple Macintosh". Og vi leverte verdens første hypertext-system. Dette begynte raskt å skyte fart. Apple introduserte noe kalt HyperCard, og de lagde en snakkis om det. De hadde et 12-siders bilag i Wall Street Journal på utgivelsesdagen. Magasinene begynte å dekke dette. Byte magazine og Communications ved ACM hadde unike utgaver som dekket hypertext. Vi lagde en PC-versjon av dette produktet i tillegg til Macintosh-versjonen. Og PC-versjonen vår ble ganske moden.
These are some examples of this system in action in the late 80s. You were able to deliver documents, were able to do it over networks. We developed a system such that it had a markup language based on html. We called it hml: hypertext markup language. And the system was capable of doing very, very large documentation systems over computer networks.
Dette er noen eksempler på dette system i praksis, på sent 80-tall. Du kunne levere dokumenter, faktisk gjøre dette over nettverk. Vi lagde et system slik at det var et "markup language" basert på HTML. Vi kalte det HML: Hypertext Markup Language. Og system kunne utføre veldig store dokumentasjonssystemer via nettverk.
So I took this system to a trade show in Versailles near Paris in late November 1990. And I was approached by a nice young man called Tim Berners-Lee who said, "Are you Ian Ritchie?" and I said, "Yeah." And he said, "I need to talk to you." And he told me about his proposed system called the World Wide Web. And I thought, well, that's got a pretentious name, especially since the whole system ran on his computer in his office. But he was completely convinced that his World Wide Web would take over the world one day. And he tried to persuade me to write the browser for it, because his system didn't have any graphics or fonts or layout or anything; it was just plain text. I thought, well, you know, interesting, but a guy from CERN, he's not going to do this. So we didn't do it.
Så jeg tok med dette systemet til en messe i Versailles, ved Paris sent i november 1990. Bort til meg kom det en hyggelig ung man ved navn Tim Berners-Lee som sa, "Er du Ian Ritchie?", og jeg sa, "Ja." Han sa så, "Jeg må snakke med deg." Og så fortalte han meg om dette foreslåtte systemet kalt World Wide Web. Og jeg tenkte at det var et rimelig jålete navn, spesielt med tanke på at hele systemet kjørte fra datamaskinen på kontoret hans. Men han var helt overbevist om at hans World Wide Web en dag ville ta over verden. Han forsøkte å lokke meg til å skrive en nettleser til det, fordi systemet hans ikke hadde noen grafikk, skrifttyper, layout eller noe; det var kun ren tekst. Jeg tenkte, vel dette er jo interessant, men en fyr fra CERN, han kommer ikke til å fullføre dette. Så vi droppet det.
In the next couple of years, the hypertext community didn't recognize him either. In 1992, his paper was rejected for the Hypertext Conference. In 1993, there was a table at the conference in Seattle, and a guy called Marc Andreessen was demonstrating his little browser for the World Wide Web. And I saw it, and I thought, yep, that's it. And the very next year, in 1994, we had the conference here in Edinburgh, and I had no opposition in having Tim Berners-Lee as the keynote speaker.
De neste årene. ble han heller ikke anerkjent av hypertext-miljøet. I 1992 ble bidraget hans avvist ved Hypertext Konferansen. I 1993, fantes det et bord ved konferansen i Seattle og en fyr ved navn Marc Andreessen demonstrerte sin lille nettleser for World Wide Web. Jeg så det, og tenkte, ja, det var det. Året etterpå, i 1994, hadde vi en konferanse her i Edinburgh, og jeg hadde ingen motsigelser mot å ha Tim Berners-Lee som hovedtaler.
So that puts me in pretty illustrious company. There was a guy called Dick Rowe who was at Decca Records and turned down The Beatles. There was a guy called Gary Kildall who went flying his plane when IBM came looking for an operating system for the IBM PC, and he wasn't there, so they went back to see Bill Gates. And the 12 publishers who turned down J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, I guess.
Det setter meg jo i rimelig berømt selskap. Det var en som het Dick Rowe som var på Decca Records og avslo The Beatles. Det var en fyr ved navn Gary Kildall som dro for å fly sitt eget fly når IBM kom og så etter et operativsystem for IBM-PC'en, og han var ikke der, så de gikk tilbake til Bill Gates. Og hva med de 12 forlagene som avslo J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.
On the other hand, there's Marc Andreessen who wrote the world's first browser for the World Wide Web. And according to Fortune magazine, he's worth 700 million dollars. But is he happy?
På den andre siden har vi Marc Andreessen som skrev verdens første nettleser for World Wide Web. Ifølge bladet Fortune, er han verdt 700 millioner dollar. Men er han lykkelig?
(Laughter)
(Latter)
(Applause)
(Applaus)