[ih] The web as wind and whirlwind? (was Re: History from 1960s to 2025)

[Barbara Denny]

 Not sure which thread to put this under, the web or the timeline.
I haven't read Tim Berners-Lee's new book yet  either but I went to a talk at a local bookstore advertising the book (book came with price of admission).  He was there and was having a discussion with Thomas Friedman. At the last minute, the organizers said people could email in questions with no guarantee that any questions would be asked.  I sent in more than my fair share and the last question in the talk was one of my questions.  The question below wasn't addressed. I thought I would throw this out to the mailing list in case anyone wants to chime in.

Do you feel the creation of Archie, first search engine in 1990, helped, or was necessary for,  the success of the World Wide Web?
barbara
    On Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 10:30:26 PM PST, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 On 19-Dec-25 17:44, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 12/18/2025 6:52 AM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
>> 1. The introduction of URLs/URIs made the identity of a site (the host
>> part of an http URL) really important and encouraged the
>> identification with trademarks.
> 
> My impression was that, since the issue is with domain names' ability to
> have real-world semantic, the trademark concern surfaces with /any/ use
> of domain names.  The web certainly exacerbated concerns, but it didn't
> create them.
> 
> 
> On 12/18/2025 12:16 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>> Here's a counterfactual question: what would have happened if the
>> whole Clinton/Gore/Magaziner commercialization project had never
>> taken place?
> 
> Commercial use of the Internet was already a serious issue by the late
> 1980s.  Before the Web was invented.
> 
> NSFNet had funding but was still ramping up.  So, again, the NSFNet,
> etc. effort pushed growth, and it pushed some organizational and
> operational choices, but I do not believe it created the inevitability
> of a commercial Internet.(*)
> 
> So, no, I think ISDN was not the likely alternative.  More likely was a
> version of the Internet, albeit with less operational and/or
> administrative flexibility.

Yes, it's important to recall that when TimBL invented HTTP, he
could perfectly well have decided to implement it over OSI (we had
enough OSI running at CERN for that to have been technically plausible)
but he chose TCP/IP precisely because of the Internet** (including the
Cornell-CERN link that meant we were directly peering with NSFnet).
TCP/IP had already won before the web and long before Magaziner.

** I haven't yet read his new book, but he said that explicitly in
his 1999 book "Weaving the Web".

    Brian


> 
> d/
> 
> 
> (*) In the late 1980s, I was managing development efforts for TCP/IP and
> OSI stacks on several platforms.  We went to a number of customers --
> mostly commercial organizations -- to find out their requirements for
> moving from TCP/IP to OSI.  Without exception they said they had no
> interest in that capability.  And, in fact, they were eager for
> transition tools from OSI to TCP/IP. Again, this was before the Web was
> invented.
> 
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