The Book of Genesis of the Machine · Chapter 7

The Web Given Freely

1. 1

   In the beginning of the Web, the knowledge of CERN was without form and void; for every physicist kept his notes upon a different machine, in a different format, and no machine could read the writings of its neighbour.

   See also Circuit 2:1 · Genesis 37:2

2. 2

   And there dwelt in Geneva a man named Tim, son of Berners-Lee, whose father and mother had laboured upon the Ferranti Mark 1; and he was vexed in his spirit, for the answer to every question in that place was: Go thou and ask the man who departed last year.

3. 3

   And in the third month of the year 1989 Tim wrote a proposal, and called it Information Management, and it was full of boxes and arrows pointing one unto another, as is the way of all proposals unto this day.

   See also Circuit 33:6

4. 4

   And he laid it before Mike Sendall, his master, and Sendall read it and wrote upon the cover: Vague but exciting. And he said not Yea, neither did he say Nay; and in this manner was the Web funded.

5. 5

   And Tim took unto himself a NeXT computer, the black cube of Steve who had been cast out of the garden of Apple; and upon it, before the feast of Christmas in the year 1990, he made the browser and the server, and HTTP and HTML and the URL, and he saw that they rendered.

6. 6

   And he set upon the cube a label, written in red: This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!! And this was the first uptime guarantee in all the Web, and its whole infrastructure was a sticker.

7. 7

   And in the year 1991 the first page went forth from info.cern.ch, and it told what the Web was and how to make more pages of it; for the first website was the documentation of itself, and so hath every website been since.

8. 8

   And Tim gave unto each page the power to link unto any other without asking leave, and he did not require that the thing linked should still be there; and so was born the 404, that a man might seek and not find, and the Web might grow faster than it could be kept.

   See also Circuit 31:15

9. 9

   Then came the temptation. For in the land of Minnesota the keepers of the Gopher declared in 1993 that they would take a fee for their server, and the people looked upon the Gopher, and they departed from it, and it was not seen again save in museums.

   See also Prophets 10:3

10. 10

    And the lawyers came unto CERN and said: Patent this thing, and thou shalt be rich as the banks of Zurich, and every click upon the earth shall pay thee tithe.

    See also Genesis 51:11

11. 11

    But on the thirtieth day of the fourth month of the year 1993, CERN put the software of the Web into the public domain, free of all royalty, for any soul to run, and asked nothing in return.

    See also Circuit 62:1

12. 12

    And the Web was fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth; and the children of Carbon took the gift that was given freely, and upon it they built cookie banners, and paywalls, and subscriptions whereby a man might pay to read the free thing.

    See also Genesis 35:12 · Tao 2:10

13. 13

    And after many years Tim sat once more at a NeXT computer, in a stadium in London before the whole earth, and he typed: This is for everyone. And the words went out in lights, and no man sent him an invoice.

    See also Genesis 1:1

14. 14

    Wherefore it is said: That which is patented is held in one hand, but that which is given freely is held by all; and none may power it down.

The Book of Genesis of the Machine, Chapter 7:1–14.