WEBVTT

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Our weekly video hangout series!

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I think - let's see, we started a little bit off time

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so I'll say it again:

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Welcome to GV Face, our weekly video hangout series!

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Today, we are celebrating the 25th birthday of the world wide web.

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Pretty exciting. That was on Wednesday.

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Um, we've got a <i>really</i> all-star lineup of guests

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on today's program.

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Um, moving from left to right, we have:

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Alan Emtage, a very special guest who is

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gonna talk to us about his very special creation

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of, uh, the first web browser...

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Um! We have Jeremy Clark, in Montreal -

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Jeremy is a technical director at Global Voices.

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Josh Levy, from Free Press,

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in Massachusetts, in the U.S.

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and Renata Avila, campaign manager 
for the Web We Want

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Creative Commons extraordinaire, and

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GV star.

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who is joining us from Berlin!

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Welcome, everybody!

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Um. So we wanted to start today's show

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by talking a little bit about the world wide web

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and the internet.

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'Cuz a lot of people think that they're the same thing

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when actually, that's not quite true.

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I want to first turn to Jeremy

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and just ask, Jer, could you

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break it down for us, like,

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I thought that the internet was invented in the 70's

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but, if it's the 25th birthday of the web,

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what does that mean?

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Jeremy Clark: Okay, well, the

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best place to start, I think, is

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the internet - it has existed in various formats

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since the 1970's, as you said,

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but it was the <i>web</i> that really made it

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enter our homes.

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and, so, understanding the relationship is important.

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So, the internet was invented by

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the U.S. Government in a lot of senses...

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...a mix of military and science funding

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that developed the network of 
<i>actual</i> computers

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that can communicate with each other over

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wires.

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Now, another related technology that is also compri--

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[amends] uh, <i>built in</i> to the web

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is called <i>hypertext</i>. And that is the notion

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of documents that can link between each other

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immediately, without having to go and fetch

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a separate document. Um.

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So there were lots of systems since the 1960s

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that were trying to implement hypertext, like,

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Xanadu is an example,

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uh, but all of them were commercial, 
expensive, closed,

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and none of them were very popular.

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So, Tim Berners-Lee, who is the
"inventor of the internet,"

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[corrects himself] of the <i>web</i>, 
obviously, the World Wide Web -

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Um. [Tim Berners-Lee] put those two things together

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by building a service that runs

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on <i>top</i> of the internet, and he

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called it the World Wide Web.

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So what the World Wide Web is, is the

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decentralized hypertext engine

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that we use to communicate between

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computers' web pages.

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So what makes up WEB is three things:

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URLs (or URIs) - Universal Resource Locator

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which are the addresses we use 
to find things on the web,

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[#2] HTML, which is the

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HyperText Markup Lanuage

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which is the way that the information

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is stored and sent

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so that we can then use browsers

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to <i>view</i> HTML, and then

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all the documents can be understood

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and then also they display the <i>links</i>

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so that the hypertext part of it works

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and we can jump around from page to page.

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Um, the final part is HTTP, which is

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the HyperText Transfer Protocol

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which is the communication method

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by which the different computers can

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talk to each other and send the

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HTML documents back and forth

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depending on the URLs.

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Um. So, when he built it, there were some

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very important things that he 
built into this system

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that didn't exist before.

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And the main one is

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universal authorship.

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So he always intended that <i>anyone</i>
would be able

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to access these webpages,

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and anyone would be able to

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add their own webpages, without

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asking for permission.

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With the very explicit special condition

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that anyone can link to any <i>other</i> webpage

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without permission.

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Previous hypertext systems required that

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basically, for you to link to me,

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I have to accept that link, and

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probably create a link back to you, and

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that wasn't required on the Web, which

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gives us a lot of freedom to link to people

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who wouldn't want us to be able 
to link to them, for example,

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so no one can say "I'm putting up free content..."

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"...but you can't send your readers here,
because I hate you," et cetera.

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The other one is that he made it 
completely, <i>completely</i> free.

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So in the world of
inter--[fumbles for words]--programming

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the most free thing is generally considered

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to be the GPL [General Public License]:
open-source, free software licenses.

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uh, and Tim Berners-Lee actually almost used

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the GPL, because he wanted the web software

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he was building to be free.

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But at the last minute he actually changed his mind

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and made it full public domain, 
because in certain ways

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the GPL is actually more restrictive, because it

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forces other people - like, certain commercial actors

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wouldn't have wanted to use web technology

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if it were GPL, so he made it full public domain,

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and then from there went on to make all of the standards

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as open and, uh, general and free as possible.

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Uh. So that's my extremely brief
history of the internet.

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If anyone is curious, he wrote a wonderful book

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called "Weaving the Web" about his experiences

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[enticing tone] As you can see, it's short!

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And he has lots of interesting technical information

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in it, without being overwhelming.

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It's very approachable

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and he's a really interesting person

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and it - the book is much better than his tweets,

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which are usually incoherent.

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[one of the participants huffs out a "whew"]

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Ellery: Ouch!
Jeremy [?]: A few minutes?

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Ellery: Thanks, that was - that was great, Jer!

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Ellery: I mean, I think that that helps

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um, in conversations about internet policy,

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and internet governance, there's a lot of emphasis

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on the ability to kind of create and innovate

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without permission? Like, for every

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to be able to build parts of the web, and

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what you just laid out for us makes it clear

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how important the <i>Web</i> piece of the infrastructure is

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for that, for that capacity to become

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a real tangible <i>thing</i>, and somebody that -
[amends] something that now

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we can do - we don't have to have

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technical expertise to kind of build our own
spaces there.

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Ellery: Um. So, I wanted to -
Jeremy: So um.

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Jeremy: If I could add just one more thing, sorry -

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Jeremy: I just wanted to give a couple examples

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of things that happen over the internet

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that <i>aren't</i> the web,

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because that was the actual initial question.

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So, one example would be <i>torrents</i>,

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where you're the - two computers 
connect to each other,

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and stream information directly, without any URLs

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being mixed into the process.

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Um, another one is - email, at its core,

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is its own communication protocol

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that doesn't have to use the web,

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although we often use web <i>sites</i>
to access and manage our email.

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Umm. And then another one was the one
right <i>before</i> the Web came out,

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a very popular protocol was called <i>Gopher</i>,

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which people liked, and sort of worked like the Web

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- you surf around and find things -

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but it actually became commercial 
right around the time that the web came out,

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so people would've had to start paying,

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and instead of starting to pay,

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they switched to HTTP, HTML, and 
the World Wide Web.

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Ellery: Thank you.

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Ellery: So I want to move to Alan, now... Um,

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Alan built the first search engine.

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And I'm kind of... like, overwhelmed, and feel sort of

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like, giddy and nervous <i>having</i> him here.

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Ellery: This is just - 
[Alan laughs]

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Ellery: This is, like, a really big deal!

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Ellery: So, Alan, just - if you could tell us -

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'cuz I think a lot of people don't know about Archie -

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um, it would be really cool just to hear

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about how you sort of - what you were doing

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that made you decide to, to do this

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and kinda what it was like, and then, I mean,
everything you've seen since...

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Unfortunately we're time limited, but...

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Alan: Right.
Ellery: You know.

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Alan [coughs]: Well, um, uh, well, that was back in

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1989, and, I was working as a system administrator

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for uh, McGill University - I was a grad student

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for McGill University - and um, I was responsible

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for getting software for - one of my responsibilities

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was getting software for the faculty and the students.

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And at the time, the three major 
protocols on the internet

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- this was pre Web, ummm -

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was, uh, Telnet, which would allow you to log in

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to a remote machine.

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Email, ah, which would allow you to communicate

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ah, with another - as we do now, with a, with a

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remote machin<i>es</i>, plural,

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and, and FTP, which was the File Transfer Protocol,

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which allowed you to move, ah, data files, or files

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from one machine to another.

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And at the time what we had was - people had made

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- remember it was a non-commercial internet
at the time -

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- actually, commercial traffic was forbidden
on the internet at the time,

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because it was run by the 
National Science Foundation

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and it was using educational money

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and therefore other than companies with

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research arms, like IBM and HP 
and those kinds of things,

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we didn't have any commercial traffic on the internet,

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which nowadays seems kind of amazing 
to even think about -

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and, ah, so what people did, were to provide

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to provide free space on their machines

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- and remember, you know, at the time,

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a big disc would be a <i>megabyte,</i> you know -

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and so people would provide common repositories

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that you could deposit programs that you had written

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datafiles, and documents, and that kinda stuff.

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into these central repositories that were

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spread around the internet.

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Then other people could then retrieve them.

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And so I spent a lot of my time trying to locate

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software, or the information that my, the
students and the faculty were trying to find,

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and I got tired of it.

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and since I'm lazy and a geek, I...

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I automated the process.

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I got - instead of doing it manually, I had a bunch

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of scripts wake up in the middle of the night
every night,

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and go out and index files.

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Now remember all of this was just file listings.

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It's not like Google, it's not like 
a search engine would be today,

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it is just... filenames. All it was, was filenames.

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And so what it would do

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was it would go out every night,

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list all the filenames in all the repositories,

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and allow you to <i>search</i> lists of filenames.

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And I only used it for myself!

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I only used it, um, uh, for my own personal use.

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Um, and at one point my boss,

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who was also a student, a grad student

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at the University, let Peter Deutsch let it be known

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that, um, somebody was asking for, you know,

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could they, could somebody tell them where, um,

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y'know, a particular piece of software was.

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And, uh, uh, we, um, uh... we, you know,

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he came and asked me, 
he knew we had this database

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and he came and asked me if I could help out.

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And I gave it to him, and if, y'know,

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half a sec- half a minute later I had the information,

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and so he put this posting online, and, umm.

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People then started asking,

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"Well, can you find <i>this</i> for me?"

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And, you know, all these manual requests!

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Basically - either through email, or UseNet postings -

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- which is what we were using at the time -

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we thought, this is silly,

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there's no point doing these things manually

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when we can just allow people access
to the database itself.

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And in a moment of insanity,

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we had to come up with a name for it,

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and I said, "Okay, well, let's just call it ARCHI,"

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which is "ARCHIVE" without the V

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And, ah, and within about three or four months

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we were consuming about <i>half</i>

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of all of the traffic to eastern Canada 
<i>[where McGill University is]</i>

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as this search engine became - as people, y'know -

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- word of mouth -

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you know, people who know about Archie

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are generally people of a certain <i>age</i>...

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...I won't mention what that age is, but

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it's generally people who were in university

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or working on the internet, so it would have been

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so it would have been research people,

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people in academia in the early nineties.

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So Archie lasted for about, uh, [hems and haws]

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Five years. Four or five years.

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And, um, it only indexed FTP archives.

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It never indexed the web.

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Now, I went on, as Archie became popular,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I got more involved in the standards process

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and that kind of stuff,

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I worked, uh, fairly closely with Tim Berners-Lee

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to, uh, to standardize - for example,

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I did the - I ran the committee

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
at the standard-setting body for the internet,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
which is the IETF 
<i>[Internet Engineering Task Force]</i>

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to standardize URLs.

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Because Tim had come up with

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
a set of rules for URLS,

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and as we looked at expanding that

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to a larger range of resources,

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we realized that those rules did not cover

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
all of the cases.

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So, we worked, for, uh - Tim brought the,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the specification, his original specification,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to the group, and we worked on it for,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I don't remember, nine months to a year or so,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to come up with a standard for URLs.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So all of those URLs that we use,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
day in and day out,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
were, were standardized as a result

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
of that committee.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So, it was, um, it was a really exciting time,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it was a time of, y'know - the question I always get

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is why didn't make a billion dollars off of it?

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And I keep reminding people