The Web That Never Was

Explore an alternate history of the World Wide Web in this thought-provoking conference talk. Delve into a fascinating narrative that examines how pivotal moments and decisions in technology could have drastically altered the digital landscape we know today. Discover a world without Microsoft, Windows, Firefox, Google, or JavaScript, and instead encounter unfamiliar yet intriguing platforms, protocols, and programming languages. Journey through key events in computing history, from IBM's early days to the birth of the internet and beyond, reimagining how different choices could have shaped our digital experiences. Gain insights into the complex interplay of innovation, marketing, and timing that influenced the web's evolution, and consider how seemingly small decisions can have far-reaching consequences in the realm of technology.

Intro
When I was born
Things invented
Darwinian survival
IBM
The Internet
DNS
Hosts File
The World Wide Web
Microcosm
Beyond
The Grid
CERN Dog
HTML naught
Anchor
Digital Research
Apple
Perfect Digital
Silicon Graphics
Nintendo 64
Gem III
GridPerfect
lisp
viaweb
Hyper Lisp
Grid Submit
List
Gem 95
Bea
Opera
Dialup
BackRub
The Millennium Bug
The Next Generation
The Next Book
The Next Step
The Next Gen
The Buzz Starts
Reality
Virtual Reality
Tim BernersLee
HTML
Rich Text Format
Embedding Lisp
Super Mario 3
Nintendo
Microsoft Windows
Excite