Ian Ritchie: The day I turned down Tim Berners-Lee

Translator: Rune Sejr Fjord Reviewer: Jonas Tholstrup Christensen

Well we all know the World Wide Web

Vi ved alle at internettet

has absolutely transformed publishing, broadcasting,

har forandret udgivelse, tv-udsendelse,

commerce and social connectivity,

handel og sociale forbindelser totalt.

but where did it all come from?

Men hvor kom det hele fra?

And I'll quote three people:

Jeg vil citere tre personer:

Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee.

Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart og Tim Berners-Lee.

So let's just run through these guys.

Lad os lige gennemgå dem.

This is Vannevar Bush.

Dette er Vannevar Bush.

Vannevar Bush was the U.S. government's chief scientific adviser during the war.

Han var den amerikanske regerings top videnskabelige rådgiver under krigen,

And in 1945,

og i 1945

he published an article in a magazine called Atlantic Monthly.

udgav han en artikel i et blad kaldet Atlantic Monthly.

And the article was called "As We May Think."

Artiklen var kaldet "As We May Think" (Som vi kan tænke)

And what Vannevar Bush was saying

Og hvad Vannevar Bush sagde

was the way we use information is broken.

var at måden vi bruger information er i stykker.

We don't work in terms of libraries

Vi virker ikke på samme måde som biblioteker

and catalog systems and so forth.

og katalogsystemer osv.

The brain works by association.

Hjernen virker ved associationer.

With one item in its thought, it snaps instantly to the next item.

med en genstand i tanken går den øjeblikkeligt over til den næste genstand.

And the way information is structured

og måden information er struktureret

is totally incapable of keeping up with this process.

er totalt ude af stand til at følge med i den proces.

And so he suggested a machine,

Så han foreslog en maskine,

and he called it the memex.

og han kaldte den memexen,

And the memex would link information,

og memexen ville koble information,

one piece of information to a related piece of information and so forth.

et stykke information til et relateret stykke information osv.

Now this was in 1945.

Dette var i 1945

A computer in those days

og en computer i de dage

was something the secret services used to use for code breaking.

var noget efterretningstjenester brugte til at knække koder.

And nobody knew anything about it.

og ingen vidste noget om det.

So this was before the computer was invented.

Så dette var før computeren var opfundet,

And he proposed this machine called the memex.

og han foreslog denne maskine kaldet memexen,

And he had a platform where you linked information to other information,

og han havde en platform hvor du koblede information til andet information,

and then you could call it up at will.

og så kunne du genkalde det.

So spinning forward,

Hvis vi springer lidt frem,

one of the guys who read this article was a guy called Doug Engelbart,

en af dem der læste artiklen var en mand ved navn Doug Engelbart

and he was a U.S. Air Force officer.

og han var officer i det amerikanske luftvåben.

And he was reading it in their library in the Far East.

Han læste i deres bibliotek i fjernøsten

And he was so inspired by this article,

og han blev så inspireret af artiklen

it kind of directed the rest of his life.

at den på en måde styrede resten af hans liv,

And by the mid-60s, he was able to put this into action

og i midt 60'erne var han i stand til at omsætte det til handling

when he worked at the Stanford Research Lab in California.

da han arbejdede ved Stanford's forsknings laboratorium i Californien.

He built a system.

Han byggede et system,

The system was designed to augment human intelligence, it was called.

systemet var designet til at forøge menneskelig intelligens,

And in a premonition of today's world

og i en foruddannelse af nutidens verden

of cloud computing and softwares of service,

med cloud-computing og service programmer,

his system was called NLS

Blev hans system kaldet NLS

for oN-Line System.

for oN-Line System.

And this is Doug Engelbart.

og dette er Doug Engelbart.

He was giving a presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference

Han gav en præsentation ved Fall Joint computer konferencen

in 1968.

i 1968.

What he showed --

Hvad han viste --

he sat on a stage like this, and he demonstrated this system.

han sad på en scene som den her, og han demonstrerede sit system,

He had his head mic like I've got.

han havde en hoved-mikrofon som den jeg har,

And he works this system.

og han brugte systemet,

And you can see, he's working between documents

og som i kan se arbejder han imellem dokumenter,

and graphics and so forth.

grafik osv.

And he's driving it all

og han styrer det hele

with this platform here,

med den platform her.

with a five-finger keyboard

med et fem-fingers tastatur

and the world's first computer mouse,

og verdens første computermus.

which he specially designed in order to do this system.

Som han designede specielt for at lave systemet.

So this is where the mouse came from as well.

Så det er her musen kom fra.

So this is Doug Engelbart.

Det var Doug Engelbart.

The trouble with Doug Engelbart's system

Problemet med Doug Engelbarts system

was that the computers in those days cost several million pounds.

var at computere dengang kostede flere millioner pund,

So for a personal computer,

så for en personlig computer,

a few million pounds was like having a personal jet plane;

er nogle millioner pund ligesom at have et personligt jetfly,

it wasn't really very practical.

det var ikke særligt praktisk.

But spin on to the 80s

Men går vi frem til 80'erne

when personal computers did arrive,

da personlige computere ankom,

then there was room for this kind of system on personal computers.

blev der plads til denne slags system på personlige computere,

And my company, OWL

og mit firma, OWL,

built a system called Guide for the Apple Macintosh.

lavede et system kaldet Guide til Apple Macintoshen,

And we delivered the world's first hypertext system.

og vi lavede verdens første hypertekst system.

And this began to get a head of steam.

dette begyndte at gå hurtigt fremad.

Apple introduced a thing called HyperCard,

Apple introducerede noget kaldet HyperCard,

and they made a bit of a fuss about it.

og de gjorde meget ud af det.

They had a 12-page supplement in the Wall Street Journal the day it launched.

De havde et 12-siders tillæg til Wall Street Journal dagen hvor det blev udgivet.

The magazines started to cover it.

Bladene begyndte at dække det,

Byte magazine and Communications at the ACM

Byte-bladet og Communications ved ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

had special issues covering hypertext.

Havde special udgivelser der dækkede hypertekst.

We developed a PC version of this product

Vi udviklede en PC version af produktet

as well as the Macintosh version.

og også en Macintosh version.

And our PC version became quite mature.

Vores PC version blev ret moden,

These are some examples of this system in action in the late 80s.

dette er nogle eksempler af systemet i aktion i sen 80'erne.

You were able to deliver documents, were able to do it over networks.

Du var i stand til at sende dokumenter over netværk.

We developed a system such

Vi udviklede et system

that it had a markup language based on html.

så det havde et opmærkningssprog baseret på html.

We called it hml: hypertext markup language.

vi kaldte det hml: hypertekst opmærkningssprog (Hypertext Markup Language)

And the system was capable of doing

og systemet var i stand til at lave

very, very large documentation systems over computer networks.

meget, meget store dokumentsystemer over computernetværk,

So I took this system to a trade show in Versailles near Paris

Så jeg tog dette system til en messe i Versailles nær Paris

in late November 1990.

i sen-november 1990.

And I was approached by a nice young man called Tim Berners-Lee

Her kom en fin ung mand ved navn Tim Berners-Lee hen til mig,

who said, "Are you Ian Ritchie?" and I said, "Yeah."

og sagde "Er du Ian Ritchie?" og jeg sagde, "Jarh."

And he said, "I need to talk to you."

og han sagde "Jeg skal tale med dig."

And he told me about his proposed system called the World Wide Web.

og han fortalte mig om hans foreslåede system kaldet World Wide Web.

And I thought, well, that's got a pretentious name,

og jeg tænkte at det var et prætentiøst navn

especially since the whole system ran on his computer in his office.

særligt siden systemet kørte på computeren på hans kontor

But he was completely convinced that his World Wide Web

men han var fuldstændigt overbevist om at hans World Wide Web

would take over the world one day.

ville overtage verden en dag,

And he tried to persuade me to write the browser for it,

og han prøvede at overbevise mig om at skrive browseren til det,

because his system didn't have any graphics or fonts or layout or anything;

for hans system havde ingen grafik, skrifttype, layout eller noget som helst,

it was just plain text.

det var bare ren tekst.

I thought, well, you know, interesting,

Jeg tænkte : interessant,

but a guy from CERN, he's not going to do this.

men en mand fra CERN, han skal ikke lave det her.

So we didn't do it.

så vi gjorde det ikke,

In the next couple of years,

i de næste par år,

the hypertext community didn't recognize him either.

blev han heller ikke anerkendt af hypertekst-fællesskabet.

In 1992, his paper was rejected for the Hypertext Conference.

I 1992 blev hans artikel afvist til Hypertekst konferencen.

In 1993,

I 1993,

there was a table at the conference in Seattle,

var der et bord ved konferencen i Seattle,

and a guy called Marc Andreessen

og en mand ved navn Marc Andreessen

was demonstrating his little browser for the World Wide Web.

demonstrerede hans lille browser til World Wide Web.

And I saw it, and I thought, yep, that's it.

og jeg så den og tænkte "jep, der er dét!"

And the very next year, in 1994, we had the conference here in Edinburgh,

og næste år, i 1994, havde vi konferencen her i Edinburgh,

and I had no opposition in having Tim Berners-Lee as the keynote speaker.

og jeg havde intet imod at have Tim Berners-Lee som hovedtaler.

So that puts me in pretty illustrious company.

Så alt dette sætter mig i fint selskab,

There was a guy called Dick Rowe

der var en mand ved navn Dick Rowe

who was at Decca Records and turned down The Beatles.

der var ved Decca Records og sagde nej til The Beatles.

There was a guy called Gary Kildall

Der var en mand ved navn Gary Kildall

who went flying his plane

som fløj en tur i sit fly

when IBM came looking for an operating system

da IBM kom og ledte efter et operativsystem

for the IBM PC,

til IBM pc'en,

and he wasn't there, so they went back to see Bill Gates.

og han var der ikke, så de tog tilbage og mødte Bill Gates,

And the 12 publishers

og de 12 udgivere

who turned down J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, I guess.

som sagde nej til J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter.

On the other hand, there's Marc Andreessen

På den anden side er der Marc Andreessen

who wrote the world's first browser for the World Wide Web.

som skrev verdens første browser til World Wide Web.

And according to Fortune magazine,

og ifølge Fortune-bladet

he's worth 700 million dollars.

har han 3.8 milliarder kroner.

But is he happy?

Men er han glad?

(Laughter)

(Latter)

(Applause)

(Bifald)