The Web That Never Was - Dylan Beattie

The story of the web is a story about freedom. It's a story about information, about breaking down barriers, about creating new ways for people to communicate, to collaborate, and to share their ideas. It’s also a story that has as much do with marketing, money and meetings as it does with research and innovation. It’s a story of mediocre ideas that succeeded where brilliant ideas failed, a story of compromises, rushed deadlines and last-minute decisions. And it could so easily have been very, very different.
What if IBM had hired Digital Research instead of Microsoft to develop the operating system for their first PC, way back in 1980? What if Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark had gone to work for Nintendo in 1993 and never founded Netscape? What if one of the team at CERN had said “Tim, won’t it sound a bit silly if everyone spends the next fifty years saying double-you-double-you-double-you all the time”?
In this talk, Dylan Beattie will explore alternative history of the world wide web - a web with no Microsoft, no Windows; no Firefox, no Google and no JavaScript. A software industry from another timeline, a world of platforms, protocols and programming languages that are unmistakably alien - and yet strangely familiar.
So strap in, hold tight, and join us as take you on a journey through... the web that never was.
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[@nfistfu]

I like the way that this actually takes a look at real life pivotal historic decisions and actually tries to piece together what would have happened if things had gone differently, rather than just coming up with random nonsense.

[@thygrrr]

It was clear we live in the stupidest, boringest timeline, but thank you for making the point elaboratively and entertainingly.

[@Posiman]

You only say that because you are used to it. People from Dylan's timeline could find our timeline more exciting. And don't even get me started on the timeline where the internet was first invented by the Soviets...

[@MatheusAugustoGames]

@@Posiman I think they would hate js just as much as us

[@maciejglinski6564]

@@MatheusAugustoGames i like how you cant tell if the other timeline or the soviets would hate js.

[@MatheusAugustoGames]

@@maciejglinski6564 Both. Both is good

[@Reichstaubenminister]

@@MatheusAugustoGames OurScript

[@keiyakins]

"John Romero, who's quite good at level design and having great hair..." This may be the single truest description of Romero I've ever heard.

[@trudyandgeorge]

He's also an excellent programmer, he just never gets the recognition because Carmack is operating from a different dimension. But Romero is better than me, my colleagues, and anyone I've ever met.

[@getdavemoore]

watching this guy's hour long presentations back to back, a great storyteller!

[@ComputerAnarchy]

Same! While I'm writing Arduino code.

[@AndoresuPeresu]

We are not alone!

[@SufianDira]

Same! While I'm copying Calculus 2 notes

[@intangiblematter_misc]

Okay but actually that alternate HTML with ~{} instead of looks so nice to work with

[@nephatrine]

Yeah that syntax looks very nice to me. Maybe it's because I'm used to curly braces programming languages or maybe it's because the link reminds me of markdown.

[@keiyakins]

And Lisp instead of JavaScript!

[@samuellourenco1050]

I agree. And it reminds me of CS, or C if we count the use of ().

[@miikavihersaari3104]

Also, it's much more succinct. With HTML you have to write each tag twice for no reason.

While I agree, tilde is so painful to use on so many keyboards, I'd rather not. But honestly the same goes for backspace and other special characters, because they are based on US keyboard layouts.

[@Cyberfoxxy]

25:18 that HTML 0.2 syntax looks absolutely incredible. I'm actually tempted to write an interpreter for that.

[@Musikur]

Please do!

[@rhysbaker2595]

I think we should all rebuild the internet but better because this sucks right now

[@jbird4478]

@@rhysbaker2595 It's easy to design and make it better, but the problem is you will never get the world to switch.

[@trejkaz]

@@jbird4478 It's easy to make a new country with more freedom but you'll never fix all the older ones. But do you have to _go_ to the older ones?

[@pauladriaanse]

@@rhysbaker2595 ditch javascript while we're at it

[@dewdop]

That song was terrific. For those who are unaware, it's a parody of "Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen," by Baz Luhrmann.

[@dross6206]

4:00 “Code in VB once, but stop before it makes you stupid.” Me: *Glancing over at my boss who refuses to allow us to switch from VB to C#...

[@edgeeffect]

God... that's not far to go is it...

[@00oKMo00]

Have you got a new job yet @D Ross?

[@Ellygator]

This is the best fairytale of Computer history. Loved it

[@jbird4478]

The number of timelines wherein Javascript exists is probably similar to the number of alternate universes where the platypus is a thing.

[@VivekPatel-ze6jy]

18:11 almost reminds me of ao3 (non-profit fanfiction site aka archive or our own), where tags on a piece of writing are added by the author and then sorted by volunteers, who make synonymous tags redirect to the preferred one, and create parent tags, allowing users to apply a dizen filters and find exactly what they want to read. Very different vibe to algorithmic search engines

[@SirLasterOfDesaster]

OMG...it took me like 52 of those 61 minutes to realize this is a "What If?" presentation 😅

[@recarsion]

This might be the single best tech talk I have ever seen. So captivating and exciting especially since these things very well could have happened. And omg, that alternate version of HTML, I'll never be able to look at a closing tag again without puking, and Lisp instead of Js, and Java never taking off...

[@Archgeek0]

Consider how much less of a horror XML would've been if HTML hadn't abused so.

[@maxlife459]

Every once in a while I come back to this talk, and every time I rewatch this I just feel sad with the sack of mud we got instead. :(

[@fauxpas5598]

I'm such a nerd I literally got a full-body chill at 43:06 when _that_ logo appeared.

[@edgeeffect]

In Dylan's alternative universe, I would have been FORCED to use Lisp by now, and I'd have had to learn to get over my distaste for all those parenthesis-es. I always found "WWW" highly amusing because when I was at college, two of the other students always used "WWW" as their software "brand name" - which was based on a quote from Derek and Clive and stood for "Winkie Wanky Woo".

[@dziltener]

Do it. Go use Lisp for a while. It doesn't even have more parentheses than languages like C++ or Java.

[@sonickrnd]

I for one, fell in love with those brand new NEXT PALM handheld PCs, small size, robust body, long battery life and powerful computing abilities with classic GRID browser. What else can I need?

[@Brok3nC4rrot]

Lucky. I got saddled with a Be Banana Phone by my work. uuuughh

[@guai9632]

We need a sequel to this fantasy

[@MichaelKathke]

Great SciFi novel from an alternative universe in our multiverse.

[@ErikHolten]

Really well researched. The two Johns had me laughing.

[@martinstent5339]

The University of Southern California didn't invent LSD, they were only the admin users of LSD.

[@AmedeeVanGasse]

In the alternative universe, they did.

[@surlydev]

I literally applauded the opening sunscreen parody song at the beginning. That was brilliant.

[@charfractal9441]

this guy is poisnous i cant stpo watching his videos and am on a deadline

[@GCoda]

intro is awesome

[@d3xbot]

I love this spec-fic universe you've built! I'm a Mac/Linux guy today, but would I have been a BeOS guy? A NEXT guy? Or would I have gotten in with CP/M and MP/M? Would Linux have been a project or would other OSes have taken over before there was such a need for a free UNIX-like OS? I'm sure with the multi-media chops Be would've brought to Apple, they'd've come up with something iPod-like, but I wonder how integrated multi-media would be in the GRID?

[@cpt_nordbart]

Watching this on this google powered device on software for a Google owned website really puts this million dollar deal that never was into perspective.

[@karolisr]

Incorrectly defines natural selection then proceeds to give a perfect analogy of how evolution works. Great talk.

[@kjp76]

If I understand Darvin's theory, there is no best solution promoted. What has the highest number of descendants is a mutation that best suits the niche.

[@bzdirt]

Has anyone got around to make that alternate universe happen yet? Just a good Grid Browser with non-sucky html code for starter...?

[@prospoulify]

And trash javascript ? Let's make a joint venture.

[@florint.4620]

This talk reminded me of Alan Kay who said as much about the sad state of the web. From an interview in FastFortune (www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now) "But then, what you’ve got is a gazillion people exploiting all this technology that was invented in the ARPA/PARC community, and most of them are not even curious. You have Tim Berners-Lee, [the inventor of the World Wide Web] who was a physicist, who knew he would be thrown out of physics if he didn’t know what Newton did. He didn’t check to find out that there was a [Douglas] Engelbart [the engineer who had done pioneering work on hypertext and invented the computer mouse].

[@bzdirt]

@@florint.4620 awesome interview, thanks for the link!

[@karlproctor7526]

This made me chuckle. Thank you so much

[@YourNameHere1000]

Love the intro. Great respect to the best video advice ever created. 👏

[@edgeeffect]

I love that mainframe picture at 10:00 ... it's like "One mainframe isn't enough for us, we need at least two!"

[@thematicschematic]

I literally cheered when BeOS made an appearance.

[@CattleRustlerOCN]

Interesting side note to this, during the time IBM started selling home pc's they leased ms-dos from microsoft and could sell it with their pcs. The fact that they didn't do a deal to make it ibm exclusive meant that MS could sell the OS to anyone. Now couple this fact with both Compaq and Phoenix legally backwards engineering the proprietary ibm pc bios, and ibm using off the shelf parts to build pcs meant that any company could create pc clones. Compaq did just that selling massive amounts and Phoenix just sold bios chips and got rich too. This combination of missteps by ibm, and others like sticking with 286 when 386 became available, and barking up the dead os/2 tree (also developed by MS for IBM) for too long when windows showed up, meant that ibm was basically crushed in the home pc market. They could have cornered that market and I shudder to think how pc history would have suffered if that happened. Luckily for all of us they screwed up and thought they were untouchable.

[@BartKus]

What beautiful truelies you weave!

[@pm71241]

I recall being in the first semesters of College when all this WWW stuff started.- using Mosaic . (and using NeXT cubes btw... fantastic machines) ... and I btw. still have a BeBox, running BeOS (NetPositive is unfortunately not a Grid-browser ... it's a web-browser) I have to say, though ... looking back on BeOS from a technical perspective. As much as it was an fantastic OS, basing the API on 1996-style C++ might not have been a good idea in the long run.

[@rustkitty]

Screw it, I'm quitting software development, enroll in physics and work my ass off inventing Sliders technology just to find and move to that dimension!

[@Rikame912]

Great presentation, thank you!

[@somenameidk5278]

58:04 just hearing the alternate version of that story i was thinking "and then they reply with a C&D letter" because that's what Nintendo always does

[@L1m3r]

I missed the part where Linus Torvalds developed a new OS kernel - the "Linux micro kernel" ;-)

[@christianfuchs9750]

Intro video "Use Flatscreens": kzbin.info/www/bejne/p2SqZXiGfK1lqJI (in case you were looking for it; I did not find it in the description or the comments so far)

[@gonzalomunoz2767]

Oh man we should be exploring the galaxy by now. This left me so depressed lol. Such a nostalgia for something that didn't even exist

[@oswurth8774]

He keeps you in suspense. MY critiques @ 14:50. Maintain patience, adopt the character, keep attention on you.

[@tharfagreinir]

I happen to be watching this on May the 5th 2022. Very good talk!

[@InfernalPasquale]

Incredible - the edge of technology and philosophy intertwined and , hence, grown

[@henning256yt]

Really great use of multimedia! ;)

[@InfernalPasquale]

such beautiful computing history. wow thankyou good king sir

[@martinmingosuarez8690]

all other talks by this guy were really inspiring, but I find this one quite depressing

[@bigh1708]

Being around in those times, I actually found it fascinating. So close.

[@tomnox900]

Great speech :D Btw hey I use Opera and I actually really like the functionality of it :D

[@SufianDira]

Brilliant talk

[@ITUnwrapped]

Is it ironic that mockapetris.com is not owned by the creator of DNS?

[@marcocapacchietti6753]

Lovely intro in the style (cameo?) of The Big Kahuna final monologue, kudos.

[@simonisenberg4516]

What a fascinating talk and it must have taken a ton of time for all the research so the whatifs had some basis in reality. It actually took me some time to get what he was talking about since there were quite a few familiar people and software in there but eventually I got it. :p

[@paulembleton1733]

Worth bumping this with a comment.

[@Njinx_]

53:00 he straight up predicted Carmack joining Oculus and working on the metaverse

[@iwikal]

What do you mean predicted? Carmack joined Oculus in 2013, and this talk was given in 2018.

[@MarcCastellsBallesta]

That was great.

[@rhodiumthunderbird]

32:43 I do not see a single universe, no matter what else happens, where *Nintendo* is doing early online gaming.

[@chudchadanstud]

god that html looks good.

[@funkenjoyer]

I dunno why but whenever i see the title of the talk i autocorrect it to "The little web that couldn't"

[@pavankumar0425]

good to know all these details

[@flameski_]

You realise basically none of this actually happened, right?

[@rawkeh]

@@flameski_ Except the bits noted as having happened

[@JimmyZeng]

Is there a transcript?

[@roo72]

Genius.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

50:54 I think 5GB flash memory was very unrealistic in 1999.

[@leap123_]

he probably meant hard drive not flash memory

[@rfvtgbzhn]

​​@@leap123_that wouldn't be remarkable at all in 1999, as even 2.5" hard disks reached 5 GB already in 1997 or 1998. But on the other hand, 64MB of RAM also wasn't really remarkable in 1999.

[@jacquesdemolay2699]

CP/M does not mean Control Program for Micro-computers !!! it means: Control Program / Monitor

[@snorman1911]

It was named similarly to Kildall's own PL/M (Programming Language for Microcomputers).

[@omarbadran4714]

wow

[@DeathBender]

*folds his hands and prays during the intro* jk thx for this

[@Hans-gb4mv]

One question remains: what came first? Unix or LSD?

[@seriouscat2231]

Acid was first synthesized between the world wars and its effect documented in the early 1940s, in Switzerland. So it predates unix by a few decades.

[@robbietorkelsonn8509]

might have been interesting if you actually got the names of the companies right somewhere found in some text files discovered during the archeology project called FreeDOS, this actually happened ... except ... the company was novel ... the year was 1994 ... and the desktop was called desqview ... and microsoft was still dead last oh ... and is lisp ever popular these days ... "we can't make a decent ADT in something that has the class keyword, but oh boy, functional is going to solve so many issues."

[@ChrisAthanas]

Audio levels are low

[@64jcl]

Never liked html and xml in general due to the end tag nonsense. In some way I think the original proposal would have been easier to work with. Back in the early 2000's I was working on a project at NERA TMN (later part of Protek) where we needed some configuration data and everywhere I looked they suggested using xml. So instead of using anything off the shelf I just made my own and named it GenData (Generic Data), a simple system using curly braces for scope, properties colon value, and angle brackets for arrays to look like any other programming language. It was used everywhere in the project but never published online in any form. Now years later when I am working in a different company, we also needed the same thing and I searched online a bit and there is JSON, the spec is practically identical to my old GenData. Obviously its so simple that anyone could have made it and indeed that is why its so brilliant (enhanced by the JSON5 spec/library with what should have been part of it since the beginning).

[@BryonLape]

The idea that wins is usually the worst.

[@ic3xiii]

nice

[@gwaptiva]

You can detect the long arm of IBM in HTML; but then, they'd been using GML since 1969

[@roquemocan]

I would like to know which parts are really true, which, in itself would be a great story! (Nevermind... at the end Beattie tells us which part were true, and how they came to be)

[@4E414D45h]

Yes, but html forms should not be hierarchical structures

[@ShadowRadiance]

Oh I wanna live in that world. Braced grid structure with embedded lisp... mmm

[@tjsase]

Does anyone else get audio? The entire video is muted from my end.

[@donalodomhnaill]

I am not hearing any volume on this... anyone else have this have this issue?

[@itskittyme]

Volume is not something you hear. Volume is just a definition for the loudness of sound. So no, nobody is hearing volume. I do have sound though.

[@hristokozhuharov558]

@@itskittyme cringe

[@itskittyme]

@@hristokozhuharov558 you like that huh

[@rijaja]

I am as smart as brick when it comes to understanding the implicit, even the obvious stuff. "The web that never was". And it took me 40 minutes to think "hold on that's not what happened". Everything before that was "oh they actually explored it and tried something else but they came back to the first thing and we're going to know why later".

[@KyleWoodlock]

In a lot of ways, JavaScript has the same traits of HyperLisp as described here, tragic quirks aside. You can send code as data and data as code. Take some JS source in string format and `eval` it and hey presto, you've restarted the passed continuation. Of course, the JSON format exists precisely because that would be a terribly insecure thing to do. JSON is a very limited subset of JavaScript to allow only data and not code to be passed when only data is expected. There would probably be an equivalent HLON (pronounced Halon? Network nerds would love it) as a restricted class of S-expressions in HyperLisp. Also, Scheme probably would have been the ideal dialect to base HyperLisp on. As simple, pared down, and easy to implement in a Grid browser as possible

[@TomKappeln]

I remeber 1976 a guy from my hometown had a problem : His daughter was stalked via phonecalls and i builded a device that can "read" incoming calls .... The cops catched the stalker. If you watch your phone now and could read the number of the incoming call ..... that was me. Greets from Germany. I forgot to mention that he was the boss of IBM Germany .... lol

[@InfernalPasquale]

I beg your pardon?

[@repenning1]

did I hear you correctly and you suggested that LSD was invented at UC Berkley? It was not: "LSD, which stands for lysergic acid diethylamide, was first synthesized in 1938 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann."

[@user-te4eb2nw4w]

urbit. comment if you understand.

[@sysop073]

Starts at 5:16

[@americancitizen748]

April Fools?

[@cat-.-]

41:06 this behavior is present on the current web it’s called html clobbering or something and it’s a terrible idea that leads to security vulnerabilities so no

[@danfroal8057]

"it’s called html clobbering or something" That's not what HTML clobbering is.

[@paviad]

So basically evolution as opposed to intelligent design also determined our technological present.

[@seriouscat2231]

Actually it's government money that does. People have no idea how much that is involved in all these.

[@Lircking]

bro you tricked meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[@salvatoreshiggerino6810]

Gay-Related Interlinked Documents

[@0x5D]

Advanced Interlinked Document System

[@minecraftermad]

i mean it's a great story but i hated every part of it.

[@chungweiwang3718]

The selfish thrill philosophically land because bass cephalometrically soak absent a various nut. fearful fearless, mushy vision

[@evomag115]

请重启以应用您的费用

[@purpinkn]

god that was depressing

[@Hector-bj3ls]

I was with this until Lisp.

[@rudyardkipling4517]

List is an ugly language, but it is sweet and powerful as a language it is the shit, as a coding style it looks like kindergarten crayon scribbles

[@boosle780]

The slippery airplane conceivably water because adjustment comparatively confess alongside a ruthless woolen. best, spiky plastic

[@skucherov]

I glad Lisp get the place it deserves: in the garbage bin

[@williamlong4112]

That song was terrific. For those who are unaware, it's a parody of "Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen," by Baz Luhrmann.

[@ygormartinsr]

@JustSomeRandomness I'm glad someone else noticed it too. I've been seeing a lot of reposts from older comments here lately and was starting to wonder whether it was a bug on... Perhaps KZbin side? Or if bots were just reposting popular comments for some reason edit: Yup, upon further inspection I realized this dude probably is a bot. But why tho?