A next step is the move to universal authorship, in which everyone involved in an area can contribute to the electronic representation of the group knowledge. – 1991
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If it’s good people, people will want to buy it, and money is the way they vote on what they want. I believe that system is the best one we have, so if it’s right, sure people are going to make money. People will make money building software, selling information, and more importantly doing all kinds of “real” business which happens to work much better because the Web is there to make their work easier. – 1994
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I hope that the concept of the Web as an information space independent of hardware type and location will continue to exist … I hope we will be smart enough to allow this evolution and never have to suddenly stop, put a “7” in front of all the URIs, and call it something else. – 1994
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Reasonable competition speeds the pace of innovation. Companies will promote the proprietary aspects of their browsers and applications, and they should. But the navigation of the Web has to be open. If the day comes when you need six browsers on your machine, the World Wide Web will no longer be the World Wide Web. – 1995
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I had (and still have) a dream that the Web could be less of a television channel and more of an interactive sea of shared knowledge. I imagine it immersing us as a warm, friendly environment made of the things we and our friends have seen, heard, believe or have figured out. I would like it to bring our friends and colleagues closer, in that by working on this knowledge together we can come to better understandings … The dream is that if everybody works from day to day using the Web as their notebook, mailer and calendar … then the scaling problems of teams and organizations could somehow be solved. This is a dream. – 1995
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The truth is I haven’t the faintest idea where it is going to be in five years’ time. When the Web as an information space becomes an assumption, then it will be time for the next revolution. In five years’ time the next revolution may have happened on top of the Web. It will happen within the Web. It may be mobile code. It may be robots working for you. It may be people finding ways of interacting politically. – 1995
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What I see as interesting is the possibility that the Web will become something driven by its data rather than by its programs. What you see on your desktop won’t be a function of what you spend at the store for shrink-wrapped software. It will be a function of where you have been browsing. As you browse you will discover interesting objects and you will be able to download the code to make those objects come to life, and behave on your screen or in a 3-D space in a way that an author or artist intended. – 1995
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The next thing for the Web is the death of the concept of the killer application. It will be killer content. The idea of an application will disappear over time. There is one possibility … There will be a whole mingling of components of software which won’t be grouped into lumps like applications. Even the operating system will become less significant. What you will be interested in in your operating system is something which will be small and fast and get out of the way quick. – 1995
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It could be that some scientific field will be the first to be sufficiently disciplined to input its data not just as cool hypertext, but in a machine-readable form, allowing programs to wander the globe analyzing and surmising … The knowledge-engineering field has to learn how to be global, and the Web has to learn knowledge engineering, but in the end this might be a way in which again the scientific field leads the world into something very powerful, and a new paradigm shift. – 1995
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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? – 1995
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As we move into the world of mobile code, of secure systems, of network payment, the new principles are being, silently or not, laid down. These principles will define the behavior of a new machine, a new anthill, a new brain, which is the sum of ourselves and our creations. Vannevar Bush’s MEMEX was described as a complex machine. We see it now as a cog in a larger system. We feel fairly proud that we have built MEMEX-like machines. But now we have links, do we know what to do with them? When it comes to designing larger machine, we are still banging the rocks together. But we are at a time of great creativity, of great potential for change for better or worse, and there is a feeling that in fact we may be able to bring our collective teamwork up to a level at which we can ensure our survival. – 1995