TEDGlobal 2011
Ian Ritchie: The day I turned down Tim Berners-Lee
Ian Ritchie: Dagen jeg avslo Tim Berners-Lee
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Forestill deg at det er sent i 1990, og du har akkurat møtt en snill ung mann ved navn Tim Berners-Lee, som forteller deg om hans forslag om et system han kaller World Wide Web. Ian Ritchie var der. Og ... han "kjøpte" det ikke. En liten historie om informasjon, nettverk og hvordan lære av sine feil.
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:15
Well we all know the World Wide Web
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Vi vet alle at World Wide Web
00:17
has absolutely transformed publishing, broadcasting,
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har snudd opp ned på publikasjoner, sendinger,
00:21
commerce and social connectivity,
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reklame og sosiale nettverk,
00:23
but where did it all come from?
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men hvor kom alt dette fra?
00:25
And I'll quote three people:
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Jeg skal sitere tre mennesker:
00:27
Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee.
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Vannebar Bush, Doug Engelbart og Tim Berners-Lee.
00:30
So let's just run through these guys.
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Så la oss kikke litt på disse mennene.
00:32
This is Vannevar Bush.
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Dette er Vannevar Bush.
00:34
Vannevar Bush was the U.S. government's chief scientific adviser during the war.
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Vannevar Bush var myndighetene i USA's vitenskapelige hovedrådgiver under krigen.
00:37
And in 1945,
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Og i 1945,
00:39
he published an article in a magazine called Atlantic Monthly.
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publiserte han en artikkel i bladet Atlantic Monthly.
00:42
And the article was called "As We May Think."
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Artiklen het "As We May Think."
00:45
And what Vannevar Bush was saying
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Og det Vannevar Bush sa
00:47
was the way we use information is broken.
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var at måten vi bruker informasjon på er ødelagt.
00:50
We don't work in terms of libraries
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Vi arbeider ikke med tanke på biblioteker
00:53
and catalog systems and so forth.
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eller katalogsystemer og lignende.
00:55
The brain works by association.
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Hjernen fungerer ved tilknytning.
00:57
With one item in its thought, it snaps instantly to the next item.
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Med en gjenstand i tankene, hopper den umiddelbart til neste.
01:00
And the way information is structured
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Og måten informasjonen er strukturert på
01:02
is totally incapable of keeping up with this process.
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klarer ikke å holde følge med denne prosessen.
01:05
And so he suggested a machine,
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Han foreslår så en maskin,
01:07
and he called it the memex.
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og kaller den memex.
01:09
And the memex would link information,
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Og memex skal koble informasjon,
01:11
one piece of information to a related piece of information and so forth.
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en bit av informasjonen relateres til en annen bit av informasjon, og så videre.
01:14
Now this was in 1945.
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Dette var i 1945.
01:16
A computer in those days
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En datamaskin på den tiden
01:18
was something the secret services used to use for code breaking.
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var noe som de hemmelige byråene brukte for kodeknekking.
01:21
And nobody knew anything about it.
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Og ingen visste noe om det.
01:23
So this was before the computer was invented.
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Dette var før datamaskinen var oppfunnet.
01:25
And he proposed this machine called the memex.
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Og han foreslo at denne maskinen skulle kalles memex.
01:27
And he had a platform where you linked information to other information,
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Han hadde en plattform hvor man koblet informasjon til annen informasjon,
01:30
and then you could call it up at will.
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og så kunne du hente det opp av deg selv.
01:32
So spinning forward,
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Vi ruller fremover i tid,
01:34
one of the guys who read this article was a guy called Doug Engelbart,
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en av de som leste denne artikkelen var en fyr ved navn Doug Engelbart,
01:36
and he was a U.S. Air Force officer.
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og han var en amerikansk luftforsvarsoffiser.
01:38
And he was reading it in their library in the Far East.
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Og han leste dette i luftforsvarets bibliotek i midtøsten.
01:41
And he was so inspired by this article,
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Han ble så inspirert av denne artikkelen,
01:43
it kind of directed the rest of his life.
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den satte på en måte kursen for resten av livet hans.
01:45
And by the mid-60s, he was able to put this into action
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Innen midten av 60-tallet var han i stand til å bruke dette i praksis
01:48
when he worked at the Stanford Research Lab in California.
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da han jobbet ved Stanfords forskningslaboratorium i California.
01:52
He built a system.
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Han bygget et system.
01:54
The system was designed to augment human intelligence, it was called.
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System var designet for å utfylle menneskets intelligens, ble det sagt.
01:57
And in a premonition of today's world
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Og med en liten anelse om dagens samfunn
02:00
of cloud computing and softwares of service,
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med nettskyer og programvare,
02:02
his system was called NLS
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kalte han system NLS,
02:04
for oN-Line System.
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for oN-Line System.
02:06
And this is Doug Engelbart.
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Og dette er Doug Engelbart.
02:08
He was giving a presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference
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Han holdt en forelesning ved Fall Joint Computer Conference
02:11
in 1968.
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i 1968.
02:14
What he showed --
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Det han viste --
02:16
he sat on a stage like this, and he demonstrated this system.
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han satt på en scene som dette, og demonstrerte dette systemet.
02:19
He had his head mic like I've got.
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Han hadde mikrofon, slik som meg.
02:21
And he works this system.
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Og han viser dette systemet.
02:23
And you can see, he's working between documents
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Som dere kan se, jobber han seg gjennom dokumenter
02:25
and graphics and so forth.
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og bilder og så videre.
02:27
And he's driving it all
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Han kjører alt
02:29
with this platform here,
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med denne plattformen her,
02:31
with a five-finger keyboard
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et 5-fingers tastatur
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and the world's first computer mouse,
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og verdens først data-mus
02:35
which he specially designed in order to do this system.
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som han designet spesielt for å bruke på dette systemet.
02:37
So this is where the mouse came from as well.
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Dette er altså hvor musen kommer fra.
02:39
So this is Doug Engelbart.
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Så dette er Doug Engelbart.
02:41
The trouble with Doug Engelbart's system
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Problemet med Doug Engelbarts system
02:43
was that the computers in those days cost several million pounds.
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var at datamaskinene på den tiden kostet mange millioner pund.
02:46
So for a personal computer,
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Så for en PC,
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a few million pounds was like having a personal jet plane;
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ble et par millioner pund som å ha et personlig jetfly;
02:50
it wasn't really very practical.
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det var ikke spesielt praktisk.
02:52
But spin on to the 80s
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Vi går videre til 80-tallet
02:54
when personal computers did arrive,
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da PC'ene ankom,
02:56
then there was room for this kind of system on personal computers.
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noe som ga plass for hans system med PC.
02:58
And my company, OWL
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Og min bedrift, OWL,
03:00
built a system called Guide for the Apple Macintosh.
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bygde et system kalt "Guide for the Apple Macintosh".
03:03
And we delivered the world's first hypertext system.
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Og vi leverte verdens første hypertext-system.
03:07
And this began to get a head of steam.
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Dette begynte raskt å skyte fart.
03:09
Apple introduced a thing called HyperCard,
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Apple introduserte noe kalt HyperCard,
03:11
and they made a bit of a fuss about it.
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og de lagde en snakkis om det.
03:13
They had a 12-page supplement in the Wall Street Journal the day it launched.
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De hadde et 12-siders bilag i Wall Street Journal på utgivelsesdagen.
03:16
The magazines started to cover it.
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Magasinene begynte å dekke dette.
03:18
Byte magazine and Communications at the ACM
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Byte magazine og Communications ved ACM
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had special issues covering hypertext.
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hadde unike utgaver som dekket hypertext.
03:22
We developed a PC version of this product
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Vi lagde en PC-versjon av dette produktet
03:24
as well as the Macintosh version.
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i tillegg til Macintosh-versjonen.
03:26
And our PC version became quite mature.
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Og PC-versjonen vår ble ganske moden.
03:29
These are some examples of this system in action in the late 80s.
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Dette er noen eksempler på dette system i praksis, på sent 80-tall.
03:33
You were able to deliver documents, were able to do it over networks.
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Du kunne levere dokumenter, faktisk gjøre dette over nettverk.
03:36
We developed a system such
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Vi lagde et system slik
03:38
that it had a markup language based on html.
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at det var et "markup language" basert på HTML.
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We called it hml: hypertext markup language.
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Vi kalte det HML: Hypertext Markup Language.
03:43
And the system was capable of doing
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Og system kunne utføre
03:45
very, very large documentation systems over computer networks.
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veldig store dokumentasjonssystemer via nettverk.
03:49
So I took this system to a trade show in Versailles near Paris
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Så jeg tok med dette systemet til en messe i Versailles, ved Paris
03:52
in late November 1990.
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sent i november 1990.
03:55
And I was approached by a nice young man called Tim Berners-Lee
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Bort til meg kom det en hyggelig ung man ved navn Tim Berners-Lee
03:57
who said, "Are you Ian Ritchie?" and I said, "Yeah."
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som sa, "Er du Ian Ritchie?", og jeg sa, "Ja."
03:59
And he said, "I need to talk to you."
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Han sa så, "Jeg må snakke med deg."
04:01
And he told me about his proposed system called the World Wide Web.
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Og så fortalte han meg om dette foreslåtte systemet kalt World Wide Web.
04:04
And I thought, well, that's got a pretentious name,
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Og jeg tenkte at det var et rimelig jålete navn,
04:07
especially since the whole system ran on his computer in his office.
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spesielt med tanke på at hele systemet kjørte fra datamaskinen på kontoret hans.
04:10
But he was completely convinced that his World Wide Web
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Men han var helt overbevist om at hans World Wide Web
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would take over the world one day.
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en dag ville ta over verden.
04:15
And he tried to persuade me to write the browser for it,
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Han forsøkte å lokke meg til å skrive en nettleser til det,
04:17
because his system didn't have any graphics or fonts or layout or anything;
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fordi systemet hans ikke hadde noen grafikk, skrifttyper, layout eller noe;
04:20
it was just plain text.
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det var kun ren tekst.
04:22
I thought, well, you know, interesting,
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Jeg tenkte, vel dette er jo interessant,
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but a guy from CERN, he's not going to do this.
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men en fyr fra CERN, han kommer ikke til å fullføre dette.
04:27
So we didn't do it.
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Så vi droppet det.
04:29
In the next couple of years,
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De neste årene.
04:31
the hypertext community didn't recognize him either.
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ble han heller ikke anerkjent av hypertext-miljøet.
04:33
In 1992, his paper was rejected for the Hypertext Conference.
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I 1992 ble bidraget hans avvist ved Hypertext Konferansen.
04:36
In 1993,
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I 1993,
04:39
there was a table at the conference in Seattle,
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fantes det et bord ved konferansen i Seattle
04:41
and a guy called Marc Andreessen
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og en fyr ved navn Marc Andreessen
04:43
was demonstrating his little browser for the World Wide Web.
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demonstrerte sin lille nettleser for World Wide Web.
04:46
And I saw it, and I thought, yep, that's it.
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Jeg så det, og tenkte, ja, det var det.
04:48
And the very next year, in 1994, we had the conference here in Edinburgh,
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Året etterpå, i 1994, hadde vi en konferanse her i Edinburgh,
04:51
and I had no opposition in having Tim Berners-Lee as the keynote speaker.
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og jeg hadde ingen motsigelser mot å ha Tim Berners-Lee som hovedtaler.
04:55
So that puts me in pretty illustrious company.
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Det setter meg jo i rimelig berømt selskap.
04:57
There was a guy called Dick Rowe
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Det var en som het Dick Rowe
04:59
who was at Decca Records and turned down The Beatles.
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som var på Decca Records og avslo The Beatles.
05:01
There was a guy called Gary Kildall
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Det var en fyr ved navn Gary Kildall
05:03
who went flying his plane
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som dro for å fly sitt eget fly
05:05
when IBM came looking for an operating system
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når IBM kom og så etter et operativsystem
05:07
for the IBM PC,
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for IBM-PC'en,
05:09
and he wasn't there, so they went back to see Bill Gates.
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og han var ikke der, så de gikk tilbake til Bill Gates.
05:11
And the 12 publishers
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Og hva med de 12 forlagene
05:13
who turned down J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, I guess.
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som avslo J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.
05:16
On the other hand, there's Marc Andreessen
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På den andre siden har vi Marc Andreessen
05:18
who wrote the world's first browser for the World Wide Web.
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som skrev verdens første nettleser for World Wide Web.
05:20
And according to Fortune magazine,
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Ifølge bladet Fortune,
05:22
he's worth 700 million dollars.
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er han verdt 700 millioner dollar.
05:24
But is he happy?
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Men er han lykkelig?
05:26
(Laughter)
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(Latter)
05:28
(Applause)
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(Applaus)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ian Ritchie - Software entrepreneurIan Ritchie
Why you should listen
Ian Ritchie is chair of iomart plc. and several other computer and learning businesses, including Computer Application Services Ltd., the Interactive Design Institute and Caspian Learning Ltd. He is co-chair of the Scottish Science Advisory Council, a board member of the Edinburgh International Science Festival and the chair of Our Dynamic Earth, the Edinburgh Science Centre.
Ritchie founded and managed Office Workstations Limited (OWL) in Edinburgh in 1984 and its subsidiary OWL International Inc. in Seattle from 1985. OWL became the first and largest supplier of Hypertext/Hypermedia authoring tools (a forerunner to the World Wide Web) for personal computers based on its Guide product. OWL's customers used its systems to implement large interactive multimedia documentation systems in industry sectors such as automobile, defence, publishing, finance, and education. OWL was sold to Matsushita Electrical Industrial (Panasonic) of Japan in December 1989. He is the author of New Media Publishing: Opportunities from the digital revolution (1996).
He was awarded a CBE in the 2003 New Years Honours list for services to enterprise and education; he is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and a Fellow and a past-President of the British Computer Society (1998-99).
Ian Ritchie | Speaker | TED.com