Suppose … all these minor problems are cleared up, would we be seriously empowered as [Vannevar] Bush would like us to be, as a whole? Let’s think about scaling problems. Let’s think of some large numbers. The number of Web documents. The number of people in the world. The number of neurons in the brian. We’re thinking of lots of things all connected together. Web objects, people and neurons all have the ability to have random associations. The neurons seem to work (on a good day) as a integrated team. The people do in parts. The Web documents just sit there. But pretty soon the Web documents will start getting up and wandering around. So when Web objects become mobile, and start wandering around and interacting with each other, would you now put much money on them making sense as a whole?
Predictor: Berners-Lee, Tim
Prediction, in context:The following is an excerpt from a 1995 speech given by Tim Berners-Lee at MIT, arranged by Andy Van Dam in honor of the 50th anniversary of Vannevar Bush’s visionary article “As We May Think” in the Atlantic monthly in 1945. In this excerpt Berners-Lee discusses projected problems the Web may face: ”If, even given a MEMEX, we have not made progress in working in groups, then clearly we can blame the lack of good collaborative software, navigational tools, and the fact that not every one of the billions of people on the earth has an Internet-connected computer. Suppose they did. Apart from the utter horror of having nowhere to turn without seeing one of those little MEMEXes, would our problems be solved anyway? (Incidentally, I’m assuming here that some quirks of the current software are ironed out. One of these is that for some reason one cannot edit hypertext within a browser, and instead one must resort to the neolithic practise of editing the HTML source file by hand to make links. There is nothing I consider stranger than the call in a local ‘Help Wanted’ section of the paper for HTML writers!) … Suppose … all these minor problems are cleared up, would we be seriously empowered as [Vannevar] Bush would like us to be, as a whole? Let’s think about scaling problems. Let’s think of some large numbers. The number of Web documents. The number of people in the world. The number of neurons in the brian. We’re thinking of lots of things all connected together. Web objects, people and neurons all have the ability to have random associations. The neurons seem to work (on a good day) as a integrated team. The people do in parts. The Web documents just sit there. But pretty soon the Web documents will start getting up and wandering around. So when Web objects become mobile, and start wandering around and interacting with each other, would you now put much money on them making sense as a whole?”
Biography:Tim Berners-Lee of CERN first released his revolutionary World-Wide Web for initial use in 1991 and with it shared his invention HTML (hypertext mark-up language). He later served as director of W3 Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations whose goal was to find ways to help the Web reach its full potential. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: October 12, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: www.w3.org
Title, headline, chapter name: Hypertext and Our Collective Destiny
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.w3.org/Talks/9510_Bush/Talk.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Bruno, Marian Theresa