Universitat d’Alacant
2020—2021
Historia de la web e internet
«Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.»
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«It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.»
Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”, Atlantic Monthly, julio 1945.
“The Internet is really the work of a thousand people”
Paul Baran, 2001
«The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral. Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, ‘I built a cathedral.’»
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«Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, ‘Well, who built the cathedral?’ Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.»
Paul Baran, 1990
«It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10 or 15 years hence, a ‘thinking center’ that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval.»
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«The picture readily enlarges itself into a network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines and to individual users by leased-wire services. In such a system, the speed of the computers would be balanced, and the cost of the gigantic memories and the sophisticated programs would be divided by the number of users.»
J. C. R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis”, 1960.
«Many years ago, I dreamed that digital technology could greatly augment our collective human capabilities for dealing with complex, urgent problems. Computers, high-speed communications, displays, interfaces–it’s as if suddenly, in an evolutionary sense, we’re getting a super new nervous system to upgrade our collective social organisms…»
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«Since the first of these dreams got fixed in my head, decades ago, I’ve struggled with the realization that the sooner the world gets serious about pursuing the possibilities, the greater the chance that we can reduce the hazards facing this careening vessel carrying us along.»
Douglas Engelbart, “Dreaming of the Future”, BYTE Magazine, septiembre 1995.
«One of the things that is peculiar and interesting about the Internet history is that the TCP/IP protocols were never patented. In fact, they were made available as widely as possible to the public as soon as possible…. The openness of those protocols and their availability was key to their adoption and widespread use. I think if Bob and I had not done that - if we had tried to, in some way, constrain and restrict access to those protocols, some other protocol suite would probably be the one we’d be using today.»
Vinton Cerf, 2000
«The way the internet is designed is very much as a decentralised system. At the moment, because countries connect to each other in lots of different ways, there is no one off switch, there is no central place where you can turn it off.»
«In order to be able to turn the whole thing off or really block, suppress one particular idea then the countries and governments would have to get together and agree and co-ordinate and turn it from a decentralised system to being a centralised system.»
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«And if that does happen it is really important that everybody fights against that sort of direction.»
Tim Berners-Lee, 2012