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

Translator: Joachim Grønhaug Reviewer: Martin Hassel

Well we all know the World Wide Web

Vi vet alle at World Wide Web

has absolutely transformed publishing, broadcasting,

har snudd opp ned på publikasjoner, sendinger,

commerce and social connectivity,

reklame og sosiale nettverk,

but where did it all come from?

men hvor kom alt dette fra?

And I'll quote three people:

Jeg skal sitere tre mennesker:

Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee.

Vannebar Bush, Doug Engelbart og Tim Berners-Lee.

So let's just run through these guys.

Så la oss kikke litt på disse mennene.

This is Vannevar Bush.

Dette er Vannevar Bush.

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

Vannevar Bush var myndighetene i USA's vitenskapelige hovedrådgiver under krigen.

And in 1945,

Og i 1945,

he published an article in a magazine called Atlantic Monthly.

publiserte han en artikkel i bladet Atlantic Monthly.

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

Artiklen het "As We May Think."

And what Vannevar Bush was saying

Og det Vannevar Bush sa

was the way we use information is broken.

var at måten vi bruker informasjon på er ødelagt.

We don't work in terms of libraries

Vi arbeider ikke med tanke på biblioteker

and catalog systems and so forth.

eller katalogsystemer og lignende.

The brain works by association.

Hjernen fungerer ved tilknytning.

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

Med en gjenstand i tankene, hopper den umiddelbart til neste.

And the way information is structured

Og måten informasjonen er strukturert på

is totally incapable of keeping up with this process.

klarer ikke å holde følge med denne prosessen.

And so he suggested a machine,

Han foreslår så en maskin,

and he called it the memex.

og kaller den memex.

And the memex would link information,

Og memex skal koble informasjon,

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

en bit av informasjonen relateres til en annen bit av informasjon, og så videre.

Now this was in 1945.

Dette var i 1945.

A computer in those days

En datamaskin på den tiden

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

var noe som de hemmelige byråene brukte for kodeknekking.

And nobody knew anything about it.

Og ingen visste noe om det.

So this was before the computer was invented.

Dette var før datamaskinen var oppfunnet.

And he proposed this machine called the memex.

Og han foreslo at denne maskinen skulle kalles memex.

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

Han hadde en plattform hvor man koblet informasjon til annen informasjon,

and then you could call it up at will.

og så kunne du hente det opp av deg selv.

So spinning forward,

Vi ruller fremover i tid,

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

en av de som leste denne artikkelen var en fyr ved navn Doug Engelbart,

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

og han var en amerikansk luftforsvarsoffiser.

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

Og han leste dette i luftforsvarets bibliotek i midtøsten.

And he was so inspired by this article,

Han ble så inspirert av denne artikkelen,

it kind of directed the rest of his life.

den satte på en måte kursen for resten av livet hans.

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

Innen midten av 60-tallet var han i stand til å bruke dette i praksis

when he worked at the Stanford Research Lab in California.

da han jobbet ved Stanfords forskningslaboratorium i California.

He built a system.

Han bygget et system.

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

System var designet for å utfylle menneskets intelligens, ble det sagt.

And in a premonition of today's world

Og med en liten anelse om dagens samfunn

of cloud computing and softwares of service,

med nettskyer og programvare,

his system was called NLS

kalte han system 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 holdt en forelesning ved Fall Joint Computer Conference

in 1968.

i 1968.

What he showed --

Det han viste --

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

han satt på en scene som dette, og demonstrerte dette systemet.

He had his head mic like I've got.

Han hadde mikrofon, slik som meg.

And he works this system.

Og han viser dette systemet.

And you can see, he's working between documents

Som dere kan se, jobber han seg gjennom dokumenter

and graphics and so forth.

og bilder og så videre.

And he's driving it all

Han kjører alt

with this platform here,

med denne plattformen her,

with a five-finger keyboard

et 5-fingers tastatur

and the world's first computer mouse,

og verdens først data-mus

which he specially designed in order to do this system.

som han designet spesielt for å bruke på dette systemet.

So this is where the mouse came from as well.

Dette er altså hvor musen kommer fra.

So this is Doug Engelbart.

Så dette er 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 datamaskinene på den tiden kostet mange millioner pund.

So for a personal computer,

Så for en PC,

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

ble et par millioner pund som å ha et personlig jetfly;

it wasn't really very practical.

det var ikke spesielt praktisk.

But spin on to the 80s

Vi går videre til 80-tallet

when personal computers did arrive,

da PC'ene ankom,

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

noe som ga plass for hans system med PC.

And my company, OWL

Og min bedrift, OWL,

built a system called Guide for the Apple Macintosh.

bygde et system kalt "Guide for the Apple Macintosh".

And we delivered the world's first hypertext system.

Og vi leverte verdens første hypertext-system.

And this began to get a head of steam.

Dette begynte raskt å skyte fart.

Apple introduced a thing called HyperCard,

Apple introduserte noe kalt HyperCard,

and they made a bit of a fuss about it.

og de lagde en snakkis om det.

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

De hadde et 12-siders bilag i Wall Street Journal på utgivelsesdagen.

The magazines started to cover it.

Magasinene begynte å dekke dette.

Byte magazine and Communications at the ACM

Byte magazine og Communications ved ACM

had special issues covering hypertext.

hadde unike utgaver som dekket hypertext.

We developed a PC version of this product

Vi lagde en PC-versjon av dette produktet

as well as the Macintosh version.

i tillegg til Macintosh-versjonen.

And our PC version became quite mature.

Og PC-versjonen vår ble ganske moden.

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

Dette er noen eksempler på dette system i praksis, på sent 80-tall.

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

Du kunne levere dokumenter, faktisk gjøre dette over nettverk.

We developed a system such

Vi lagde et system slik

that it had a markup language based on html.

at det var et "markup language" basert på HTML.

We called it hml: hypertext markup language.

Vi kalte det HML: Hypertext Markup Language.

And the system was capable of doing

Og system kunne utføre

very, very large documentation systems over computer networks.

veldig store dokumentasjonssystemer via nettverk.

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

Så jeg tok med dette systemet til en messe i Versailles, ved Paris

in late November 1990.

sent i november 1990.

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

Bort til meg kom det en hyggelig ung man ved navn Tim Berners-Lee

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

som sa, "Er du Ian Ritchie?", og jeg sa, "Ja."

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

Han sa så, "Jeg må snakke med deg."

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

Og så fortalte han meg om dette foreslåtte systemet kalt World Wide Web.

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

Og jeg tenkte at det var et rimelig jålete navn,

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

spesielt med tanke på at hele systemet kjørte fra datamaskinen på kontoret hans.

But he was completely convinced that his World Wide Web

Men han var helt overbevist om at hans World Wide Web

would take over the world one day.

en dag ville ta over verden.

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

Han forsøkte å lokke meg til å skrive en nettleser til det,

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

fordi systemet hans ikke hadde noen grafikk, skrifttyper, layout eller noe;

it was just plain text.

det var kun ren tekst.

I thought, well, you know, interesting,

Jeg tenkte, vel dette er jo interessant,

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

men en fyr fra CERN, han kommer ikke til å fullføre dette.

So we didn't do it.

Så vi droppet det.

In the next couple of years,

De neste årene.

the hypertext community didn't recognize him either.

ble han heller ikke anerkjent av hypertext-miljøet.

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

I 1992 ble bidraget hans avvist ved Hypertext Konferansen.

In 1993,

I 1993,

there was a table at the conference in Seattle,

fantes det et bord ved konferansen i Seattle

and a guy called Marc Andreessen

og en fyr ved navn Marc Andreessen

was demonstrating his little browser for the World Wide Web.

demonstrerte sin lille nettleser for World Wide Web.

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

Jeg så det, og tenkte, ja, det var det.

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

Året etterpå, i 1994, hadde vi en konferanse her i Edinburgh,

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

og jeg hadde ingen motsigelser mot å ha Tim Berners-Lee som hovedtaler.

So that puts me in pretty illustrious company.

Det setter meg jo i rimelig berømt selskap.

There was a guy called Dick Rowe

Det var en som het Dick Rowe

who was at Decca Records and turned down The Beatles.

som var på Decca Records og avslo The Beatles.

There was a guy called Gary Kildall

Det var en fyr ved navn Gary Kildall

who went flying his plane

som dro for å fly sitt eget fly

when IBM came looking for an operating system

når IBM kom og så etter et operativsystem

for the IBM PC,

for IBM-PC'en,

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

og han var ikke der, så de gikk tilbake til Bill Gates.

And the 12 publishers

Og hva med de 12 forlagene

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

som avslo J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.

On the other hand, there's Marc Andreessen

På den andre siden har vi Marc Andreessen

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

som skrev verdens første nettleser for World Wide Web.

And according to Fortune magazine,

Ifølge bladet Fortune,

he's worth 700 million dollars.

er han verdt 700 millioner dollar.

But is he happy?

Men er han lykkelig?

(Laughter)

(Latter)

(Applause)

(Applaus)