30 years of a free and open Web

I happen to be a director of research was it from 1989 until 1995 I believe and um and I was responsible for the LHC program and also computing Mike sandel was the boss of Timber and Leslie and he came to me and said well I have to show you something which is very interesting so that that was my first encounter with the worldwide web and Mike was very enthusiastic and he told me well this is going to be very important I think Mike was enthusiastic not just because he realized that might be a success in the academic world but he he saw the the possible social societal aspect as well no I think he he was aware of the of the importance I think that I'm pretty sure of that and so he convinced me of that Mike went around Europe to talk to a couple of software companies to find out whether that was whether they were interested and he returns with the message that nobody was really interested but but that was in the beginning and then we went to Brussels I mean to find out whether the European Union better European Commission was interested in taking it up and making it into an example of of European success and that they were interested that takes months if not years and so that and so then Tim went was hired by MIT and he moved to MIT after these these failed attempts we um well we we discussed and and actually it was proposed to me that we should bring it into the public domain um and I think most people will agree that it was the best that we could have done and that was the source of the success of the worldwide map of course apart from the World Wide Web itself we had the the first uh World provide Web Conference etson and Robert Caillou was organizing that he actually was yeah he was the initiator of this conference and and at the opening session I expressed my concern not so much the World Wide Web but about the Abundant use that everybody was making of it and eating up all the bandwidth that we had I mean at that time bandwidth was a very costly so my concern was that everybody was zooming in on the worldwide web making use of it looking at all kind of beautiful pictures of the weather forecast and whenever I went to through the corridors I saw all these people looking at things that were clearly not physics but there are other things and so I made I expressed my concern about that but fortunately very rapidly the bandwidth became a more more commodity and that's what it is now well yeah at a certain moment you start to see what what it's what it can do and and so it didn't take many years um to realize how important it could be in that and and are beneficial that could be to all kinds of sectors of society not just science but also in the commercial sector as a tool for communicating

Channel: CERN

Views: 3,426

Keywords: computing, cern, world wide web

Id: WtRToImZRY8

Length: 5min 2sec (302 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023