1. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 1 WWW: its creation - its success - its lessons Ben Segal / CERN, Geneva b.segal@cern.ch www.cern.ch/ben International Conference on Standardization and Innovation CERN: November 13, 2014

2. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 2 From the Web to the Grid – 2007 “ Vague but exciting ” (reaction of Mike Sendall to the 1 st proposal by Tim Berners-Lee, March 1989)

3. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 3 One man ’ s dream… “ People just need to agree on a few simple things… ” Tim Berners-Lee to present speaker - 1989

4. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 4 “ People just need to agree on a few simple things… ” … then make them standards … (This led to the W3C)

5. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 5 What is WWW? "HTML": Hypertext Markup Language "HTTP" : HyperText Transport Protocol "URL" : Uniform Resource Locator plus a CLIENT ("Browser") and a SERVER. Entirely developed and programmed by Tim Berners-Lee (prototyped from September to December, 1990)

6. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 6 What standards used? "HTML": is a subset of SGML "HTTP" : TCP/IP and some FTP and NNTP ideas "URL" : Internet DNS and Unix filename conventions e.g. http://www.cern.ch/dir/file.html plus a CLIENT ("Browser") and a SERVER (C language plus Unix functionality)

7. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 7 The background Tim Berners-Lee had: vision & perseverance and also… fine implementation skills for design + choice of tools + standards … but he was not in an ideal place! …

8. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 8 Inside CERN : 1980-90 The Political Order: Physics Accelerators THE REST ( …… Computing) Order in Computing: Big mainframes (IBM, etc) Big peripherals (Tape robots, etc) THE REST ( …… Networking) Order in Networking: External (X.25, DECnet, SNA) Internal ( CERNET, Ethernet) ====> (Internet + Distributed Computing) <====

9. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 9 So what else was needed? his manager ’ s tolerance and interest CERN spirit: “ hands-on ” plus pragmatism Internet technology: just accepted at CERN Open Source movement gaining strength the NexT machine and NextStep OS “ underground ” spirit of the project “ just enough ” space to work in… the “ KISS ” principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid…

10. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 10.. plus some lucky accidents.. BS had mentored TBL for his official CERN project, noticed his talents and helped him to get support (and NeXT machines). BS knew J-F Groff was underused and helped to arrange his transfer to work with TBL. TBL ’ s manager (MS) knew Robert Cailliau was interested in hypertext and Open Source, so encouraged him to help TBL. The Open Source community contributed a lot of effort to the project after TBL published it on the Internet in August 1991. Commercial applications began to be allowed on the Internet after the US Congress changed the law (1991).

11. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 11 Summary WWW was “ accidentally ” created at CERN: from within its weakest part and using "underground" resources, but in fact its “ weakness ” helped, because: it had to be kept simple and: it had to use existing standards and outside resources ( thus spreading it faster )

12. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 12 Black Swans… “ History does not crawl, it jumps… ” Nassim Nicolas Taleb, 2007 “ Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable ”

13. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 13 The future after … WWW, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Wikileaks… … what ’ s next? … we can only prepare the ground …

14. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 14 So what are the lessons? Try to reveal and mentor innovative talent Leverage existing code and standards Encourage open interaction with outside people Make “ just enough ” space for test projects Allow personal research time (e.g. 20% at Google) Be humble - Black Swans are not planned!

15. Intl. Conf. on Standardization & Innovation Ben Segal November 13, 2014 15 Credits To two managers with vision and political skill, who knew how to make space for innovation in a conservative environment: Mike Sendall Les Robertson