So that was a series of action packed
videos Brendan and Mitchell have done a
great deal.
And if you look at the current HTML 5,
JavaScript, really some of the work that
Brendan and Mitchell have done have
created this new world that we live in
right now with these highly interactive
applications JavaScript, Ajax.
It can really all trace its moment back to
its creation moment, back to these folks,
who A, created a clever technology, and B,
fought to keep it from becoming too
proprietary.
And so a lot of people.
Gave up on, say, their own personal
benefit to believe in a cause that was the
greater good of society through open
source.
Now the thing to also think about, just
kind of in the back of your mind is, if it
wasn't for Microsoft, would Netscape have
been successful in its original strategy
to make the web and both servers and the
clients, make them proprietary?
They were going to sell web browsers.
They were selling web browsers from $70 to
$100.
You used to be able to go to a store and
buy a web browser.
Your op-, your computer didn't come with a
browser.
As a matter of fact, the first time that
Microsoft put the browser in with their
operating system, they got sued for it.
But by Microsoft trying to catch up, they
had to give away the browser free which
made in impossible for Netscape to charge
for browser.
And so in some ways, not that Microsoft is
trying to make the world safe, but they
basically blunted the, blunted, put
hundreds and millions of dollars into
blunting Netscape's strategy and making
sure that.
Well, they didn't make it, but it, the net
result was the creation of Firefox and
Mozilla, and a much more, and the World
Wide Web Consortium, and a much more fair
market place.
So the World Wide Web Consortium, it was
created in October of 1994.
Cern Made a conscious decision even though
it knew that the web had been created
there, that the sort of future curation of
the web and what the web meant was not
something that a physics lab should take
on.
And so Tim Berners-Lee went to MIT.
Mit welcomed him with open arms, they
funded him, they helped him create the
World Wide Web Consortium, and have done a
wonderful job in leading the charge in
defining the standard that, that mean make
that, that de, that define the standards
that define what HTML is, what CSS is etc.
Now, in october 1994, there was no way to
know if this was going to be successful.
Again, it was somewhat a reaction to
Netscape who had this sort of like.
You know, bunker mentality that Netscape
was going to take it all over and own it
and push every, all these open people
away.
Tim, and Mitchell, and Joseph, and all
these people did not want that to happen.
They felt it should be free for everybody.
And open, and many browsers, and many
servers, and everything should
interoperate And standards for the heat of
that.
And the World Wide Web Consortium was
vehicle through which that happened, but
they didn't have any power compared to
Netscape and Netscape had all the money.
But IBM and Microsoft were not
particularly fans of Netscape either.
And so they early on joined the World Wide
Web Consortium and gave it enough
credibility.
To eventually sort of take over, in terms
of being very respected.
And the standards produced by the World
Wide Web Consortium are high quality and
very respected and, and, they're, they're
a guided, they're a shining light to
keeping the web safe for the rest of us.
And let proprietary companies do their
proprietary thing, but the World Wide Web
Consortium is a real important part of
today's web.
And so we finally come to the point where
you can assume the web where the web is
just there.
There was a bunch of browsers.
There was a bunch of servers.
There was some open source stuff and non
open source stuff and, and I want to
briefly introduce you to Tim Berners-Lee,
this footage was taken by Richard Wiggins,
not me.
Caught him in a conference and he's only,
we only got a minute of his video.
>> Last month I was off in Boston for the
4th Annual World Wide Web Conference, and
I had the opportunity to talk to the
inventor of the world wide web, Tim
Burners Lee.
And I asked him a little bit about where
are we going with this web stuff.
And we have just a little bit of footage
from Tim telling us where that's going to
be.
>> You ain't seen nothing yet.
But you wait until people consume the web.
When the web becomes something you
consume, when the web, when the
infrastructure is all laid down and we
have an information space, then it would
be time for the next revolution.
And who knows what that will be.
>> It's hard to imagine a greater
revolution that what we've seen.
I mean, I go to the smallest places and
everybody's putting up a web page.
>> Right, the web could only take place,
the revolution, the web revolution could
only take place because of the Internet,
which had been a quieter, smaller
revolution, but that had been, the
Internet itself quietly had been deployed
throughout the world, had happened.
And because the Internet was something
people could assume, the web revolution
could take place.
And the web is something you can assume,
then maybe a cultural revolution, and I
say, cultural revolution.
And when we talk about cultural
revolution, perhaps, or maybe we'll find
ways of doing things better that we hadn't
imagined.
>> Pretty neat, Rich.
One of the things that I, I liked about it
was he, he just said we're going, his idea
was the next step is something completely
different, a cultural revolution as to
compared to just a little more technology.
Ne of the things that I, I liked about it
was he, he just said we're going, his idea
was the next step is something completely
different, a cultural revolution as to
compared to just a little more technology.
One of the things that I, I liked about it
was he, he just said we're going, his idea
was the next step is something completely
different, a cultural revolution as to
compared to just a little more technology.
>> I think you can see that Tim
Berners-Lee is a real bright guy with a
real strong vision of the future and a
real deep commitment.
To the, the web and the internet being an
agent of change in the world.
And, and I think that it's going to
continue to be that, unless proprietary
companies can get an upper hand.
And so, it's really incumbent on all of us
to protect the freedom of the internet.
And there's, there's, believe me, there
are organizations that think they should
run the internet and the web.
There just are.
They never have stopped.
So we're at the point where the web is all
here, it's quite amazing.
And before we move on, I want to, I want
to characterize just a little bit about
the people you've met so far and, and talk
about some of the common, common things
that, that they, they have between them.
And in a way this, I got the book the
Wisdom of Crowds here, one of my favorite
books.
Each one of these people when you listen
to them talk, they would quite often talk
about all the other people doing all the
other work and, and they rarely consider
themselves in any way heroes.
They rarely consider themselves as the
great innovators.
They always see themselves as part of a
collective curiosity.
And there were many things that I haven't
told you about that were curious
explorations that helped inform it and,
and this was early research, and you know
until sort of the late 90's, it was just a
question of how to do it.
And at some point, after the late 90's it
switched to what to do with it and at that
point we have a whole different group of
people that start, really entering the
world.
And, and one that's, one of the earlier
one's and has benefited greatly from it is
Jeff Bezos and he's the founder of
Amazon.com and If you listen to Jeff you
will hear that he talks very differently.
Comes at it from a business perspective.
He's not necessarily trying to make the
world a worse place, he's trying to make
the world a better place.
The fact that you can get, you know, all
these books like the next morning, that's
kind of cool.
So what Amazon does is really wonderful,
it's, it It's more efficient for society,
it's economically beneficial, but he has a
profit in mind.
He is saying this web exists, browsers
exist, protocols exist.
How can I take best advantage of it?
Richard Wiggins caught up with Jeff in
1997 so just look at How smart this guy
was in 1997.
Everyone else figured this out much later,
but Jeff Bezos is a really, really bright
person.
So, here's Jeff Bezos.