Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very
difficult when I was working at CERN later.
Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multifont
text objects, had all been designed already.
I just had to put them together.
It was a step of generalizing, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about
all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary
documentation system.
But then the engineering was fairly straightforward.
It was designed in order to make it possible to get at documentation and in order to be
able to get people -- students working with me, contributing to the project, for example
-- to be able to come in and link in their ideas, so that we wouldn't lose it all if
we didn't debrief them before they left.
Really, it was designed to be a collaborative workspace for people to design on a system
together.
That was the exciting thing about it.
Computers changed.
They had graphics.
They had things like folders and "point and click," and people started to use word processors.
When they used word processors, they stored their data.
They typed into the word processor on a disk somewhere on a machine, which generally wasn't
accessible.
So there was then a new frustration that data about these systems was available, but you
had to log onto a special particular machine.
You had to learn a particular program to access it.
To find your way through the library was totally different from finding your way through the
documentation system of an experiment.
So the data was there, somewhere, going around and around on a disk, but it was really difficult
to get at.
So there was a mixture, a confluence of ideas, I suppose -- the frustration that we didn't
have access to the data that existed, even though it was there -- the need for a collaborative
environment.
I wanted something like Enquire, but where everybody could play, so that people working
together could design something in a common shared space.
My parents were both mathematicians.
They obviously had a lot of fun with math.
I was the eldest.
I am the eldest of four.
We all grew up in an atmosphere where math was sort of interesting, it was everywhere.
So making pudding or making a pie involved some calculations
and things.
I suppose when I was little, I had two friends in elementary school, and we would discuss
science.
We weren't very athletic.
We would walk around the playground and talk about chemistry and biology and physics, and
we would wind electromagnets by taking transformer wire and wrap it around a nail.
I remember those electromagnets didn't work very well.
The book said you should put the nail in the hearth, in the embers of the fire, and let
it cool, so that it got the right temper -- but we didn't have a fire with embers, so that
never happened.
The nail would become a permanent magnet.
That was the first sort of interest in, I suppose, what was to become later electronics.
When I was very small, maybe five or six, I was taken in to Daddy's work, to see a computer.
I remember it as being a big cabinet with a clock on it, and with a desk with a paper
tape reader.
One box which was a paper tape reader and one box which was a paper tape punch.
So I came home and put a clock on my cupboard, and put a desk in front of it, and I put one
cardboard box, which you pushed the paper tape into, and one cardboard box that you
pulled the paper tape out of.
So that was my first computer.
Most systems that even the most technical geeky-looking person is doing, when you ask
him why he is doing it, he's doing it for some social effect.
He's doing it because he wants to solve a problem, a problem that he's got maybe.
I think, often, some of the best programs are written by people who want to solve their
own problems, even though they're supposed to go out and find focus groups and ask general
people in the street what their problems are.
A lot of people do it for their own benefit, or for somebody very close to them, a problem
they see.
So you'll find there's always a social motivation between these things.
There are lots of new things ready to be designed.
Really, you have to think about web technology at the moment as the tip of a very large iceberg.
When the first Internet messages were sent, or the first e-mail messages, some people
may have thought, "Wow!
We have changed the world now.
You can send a message across the world just by typing it, and it arrives before you can
read it out loud.
So now, how will the world be different?"
As though there's been a sea change, and now we're going to settle down to a stable life.
You were wrong.
The pace of change is increasing.
It's not getting any slower.
The web has happened, but it's one step.
The web itself, to start with, it's part of a plan.
We've got the Data Web, which we haven't got out there yet, and that's going to have very
dramatic effects.
Going to make us much more powerful in the things that we do.
There are going to be a lot more things built on top of the web.
There are going to be layers and layers on top of the web.
And all the time, computers are getting more powerful.
People are becoming connected together, the world being smaller.
So there's very little time for sitting back and thinking, "Oh, look what we did".
I'm just an ordinary person.
Okay?
I wrote this program fairly late in life compared to some people, compared to piano prodigies.
I'm just an ordinary person with ordinary faults, who's difficult to talk to on Monday
mornings when they're grumpy and things.
I have lots of problems remembering people's names and turning up at appointments on time.
I'll get distracted easily, especially if there is some programming going on in the
vicinity.
So everybody is just a person.
We're all just a person.
I think we're all, if you like, we're all divine in some way.
We've all got that.
We've all got sparks.
We're all very, very special.
So I don't want to explain what it's like to be special, because I'm not more special
than anybody else.
When, initially, the thing was released on the Internet, it went out in various obscure
news groups, e-mail messages, and I got messages back from people I didn't know at all, on
completely different continents and islands, saying that they had installed a web server
or a new web browser.
It helped in some way.
Introducing themselves with two lines and just joining in with lots of enthusiasm, lots
of creativity, and with their own very special different way of looking at life, and with
their own motivations.
That has been really, really exciting.
When people like that have got together face to face, it's been electric.
The World Wide Web conferences we have -- now the Semantic Web Conferences as well -- have
just got a tremendous energy about them.
So doing this thing, doing this web science, is about building a huge system together,
and that spirit of collaboration -- international collaboration -- has been by far the most
exciting thing.