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我們都知道,全球資訊網徹底改變了出版、廣播、商業和社會連接方式,但它究竟從何而來?我將舉出三個人:Vannevar Bush、Doug Engelbart 和 Tim Berners-Lee,因此,讓我們迅速地談談這三個人。
這是Vannevar Bush,Vannevar Bush是大戰期間美國政府的首席科學顧問,1945年他在大西洋月刊上發表過一篇文章,文章的題目是〈恰如吾輩所思〉。Vannevar Bush在文章中談到,我們使用資訊的方式並不完善,我們並沒有運用術語庫和目錄系統等工具。大腦以聯想方式運作,當大腦思索一個念頭時,瞬間便會聯想到下一個念頭,而資訊結構化的方式完全無法跟上這個運作程序。
因此他發表了一台稱之為memex的機器,memex會將一個訊息和另一個相關訊息不斷地加以連結。這是1945年的時候,在那個年代,電腦是特務機關用來破解密碼的工具,沒人曉得它是做什麼用的。這是在電腦發明之前的事,他發表了這台叫memex的機器,它有一個將資訊連接在一起的平台,你可以隨意運作它。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
Well we all know the World Wide Web has absolutely transformed publishing, broadcasting, commerce and social connectivity, but where did it all come from? And I'll quote three people: Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee. So let's just run through these guys.
This is Vannevar Bush. Vannevar Bush was the U.S. government's chief scientific adviser during the war. And in 1945, he published an article in a magazine called Atlantic Monthly.And the article was called "As We May Think." And what Vannevar Bush was saying was the way we use information is broken. We don't work in terms of libraries and catalog systems and so forth. The brain works by association. With one item in its thought, it snaps instantly to the next item. And the way information is structured is totally incapable of keeping up with this process.
And so he suggested a machine, and he called it the memex. And the memex would link information, one piece of information to a related piece of information and so forth. Now this was in 1945. A computer in those days was something the secret services used to use for code breaking. And nobody knew anything about it. So this was before the computer was invented. And he proposed this machine called the memex. And he had a platform where you linked information to other information, and then you could call it up at will.
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故事繼續前進。有個叫Doug Engelbart的傢伙讀了這篇文章,他是美國空軍軍官,他在遠東的空軍圖書館讀到它。這篇文章對他產生重大的啟發,甚至影響了他的餘生。到了60年代中期,當他在加州史丹佛大學研究實驗室工作時,將他的想法付諸行動。他建立了一個系統,據說該系統的設計目的是用於提升人類的智能,相對於今日的雲端運算和軟體服務而言,他設計的系統被稱為NLS,即線上系統。
這就是Doug Engelbart,他在1968年秋季聯合電腦大會上發表簡報,他所展示的-他坐在像這樣的講台上,示範了這個系統,戴著跟我一樣的麥克風,操作這個系統。各位可以看到他在各種文件和圖表間進行切換。他完全是以這個平台操作,透過以五指操作的鍵盤和世上第一個電腦滑鼠,這是他為了操作這個系統特別設計的,所以這也是滑鼠的由來。
這就是Doug Engelbart。Doug Engelbart的系統遇到的問題是,在那個年代,電腦動輒耗資數百萬英鎊,因此,想擁有一台個人電腦,就像買架私人飛機一樣得花上幾百萬英鎊,是相當不切實際的。
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So spinning forward, one of the guys who read this article was a guy called Doug Engelbart, and he was a U.S. Air Force officer. And he was reading it in their library in the Far East. And he was so inspired by this article, it kind of directed the rest of his life. And by the mid-60s, he was able to put this into action when he worked at the Stanford Research Lab in California. He built a system. The system was designed to augment human intelligence, it was called. And in a premonition of today's world of cloud computing and softwares of service, his system was called NLS for oN-Line System.
And this is Doug Engelbart. He was giving a presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in 1968. What he showed -- he sat on a stage like this, and he demonstrated this system. He had his head mic like I've got. And he works this system. And you can see, he's working between documents and graphics and so forth. And he's driving it allwith this platform here, with a five-finger keyboard and the world's first computer mouse,which he specially designed in order to do this system. So this is where the mouse came from as well.
So this is Doug Engelbart. The trouble with Doug Engelbart's system was that the computers in those days cost several million pounds. So for a personal computer, a few million pounds was like having a personal jet plane; it wasn't really very practical.
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這是80年代後期這個系統的一些運作例子,你可以透過網路來傳送文件檔案。我們開發了一個系統,它有以HTML為基礎的標記語言,我們稱它為HML:超文件標記語言。透過電腦網路,這個系統能處理非常大的文件編輯系統。
所以我在1990年11月下旬把這個系統帶到巴黎附近的凡爾賽貿易展當中,一位名叫Tim Beneres-Lee的年輕男子朝我走來說,「你是Ian Ritchie嗎?」我說,「是的。」他說,「我需要跟你談談。」他告訴我那個稱之為全球資訊網的系統提案,我當時想,這名稱還真是自命不凡,特別是這整個系統不過是在他辦公室的電腦上運行罷了,但他完全相信他的全球資訊網終有一天會獨霸世界。他試著說服我為它編寫瀏覽器,因為他的系統沒有任何像是製圖、字型或版面的東西;它只是純文件。我認為,各位曉得,這還蠻有趣的,不過某個從歐洲核子研究組織(CERN)來的傢伙對這檔事沒興趣,因此我們沒有這麼做。
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But spin on to the 80s when personal computers did arrive, then there was room for this kind of system on personal computers. And my company, OWL built a system called Guide for the Apple Macintosh. And we delivered the world's first hypertext system. And this began to get a head of steam. Apple introduced a thing called HyperCard, and they made a bit of a fuss about it. They had a 12-page supplement in the Wall Street Journal the day it launched. The magazines started to cover it. Byte magazine and Communications at the ACM had special issues covering hypertext. We developed a PC version of this product as well as the Macintosh version. And our PC version became quite mature.
These are some examples of this system in action in the late 80s. You were able to deliver documents, were able to do it over networks. We developed a system such that it had a markup language based on html. We called it hml: hypertext markup language. And the system was capable of doing very, very large documentation systems over computer networks.
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時間來到80年代。當個人電腦終於出現,接著出現這種建立在個人電腦上的空間。我的公司OWL建立了一個名為蘋果麥金塔指南的系統,我們發表了世上第一個超文件系統,這也刺激了後續的發展。蘋果公司推出所謂的HyperCard,他們就此大做文章。推出當天,蘋果在〈華爾街日報〉刊登了長達12頁的增刊,各大雜誌也紛紛報導這項產品,Byte雜誌和國際資訊學術協會(ACM)的通訊情報刊物也對超文件進行了專題報導,本公司開發了這個產品的PC及麥金塔版本,我們的PC版本發展得相當成熟。
在後續幾年中,超文件社群也沒有認同他;1992年,他的論文被超文件會議拒絕。1993年,在一場於西雅圖舉行的會議上,一個叫Marc Andreessen的小伙子展示了他的小全球資訊網瀏覽器,當我看到它時,心想,沒錯,就是這樣。來年,1994年,我們在愛丁堡開會,我對邀請Tim Berners-Lee擔任主講人完全沒有異議。
因此,這讓我躋身於一群名人之列。在Decca唱片,有個名叫Dick Rowe的傢伙拒絕了披頭四;有個叫Gary Kidall的傢伙,在 IBM 找人為 IBM PC 開發操作系統時跑去駕駛他的私人飛機;因為他當時不在,所以IBM回頭找上了比爾蓋茲;我猜大概有12間出版社拒絕為 J.K. 羅琳出版哈利波特。
另一方面,Marc Andreessen寫出全世界第一個全球資訊網瀏覽器,根據「財富」雜誌報導,他擁有七億美元的身價。但他快樂嗎?
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So I took this system to a trade show in Versailles near Paris in late November 1990. And I was approached by a nice young man called Tim Berners-Lee who said, "Are you Ian Ritchie?" and I said, "Yeah." And he said, "I need to talk to you." And he told me about his proposed system called the World Wide Web. And I thought, well, that's got a pretentious name, especially since the whole system ran on his computer in his office. But he was completely convinced that his World Wide Web would take over the world one day. And he tried to persuade me to write the browser for it, because his system didn't have any graphics or fonts or layout or anything; it was just plain text. I thought, well, you know, interesting, but a guy from CERN, he's not going to do this. So we didn't do it.
In the next couple of years, the hypertext community didn't recognize him either. In 1992, his paper was rejected for the Hypertext Conference. In 1993, there was a table at the conference in Seattle, and a guy called Marc Andreessen was demonstrating his little browser for the World Wide Web. And I saw it, and I thought, yep, that's it. And the very next year, in 1994, we had the conference here in Edinburgh, and I had no opposition in having Tim Berners-Lee as the keynote speaker.
So that puts me in pretty illustrious company. There was a guy called Dick Rowe who was at Decca Records and turned down The Beatles. There was a guy called Gary Kildall who went flying his plane when IBM came looking for an operating system for the IBM PC, and he wasn't there, so they went back to see Bill Gates. And the 12 publishers who turned down J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, I guess.
On the other hand, there's Marc Andreessen who wrote the world's first browser for the World Wide Web. And according to Fortune magazine, he's worth 700 million dollars. But is he happy?