World Wide Web
Robert Thibadeau, Ph.D. November 30, 1993
--
I never thought I would see the day
When books looked superfluous.
I saw, the day before yesterday,
The world.
I leapt about, from Japan, to Here, to
Australia
To Finland,
To Italy.
Like it was nothing.
And I got deep
Deep
Into people
What they were thinking and doing
What they wanted and thought
I might like.
This is what a book
Was supposed to be.
But this was much better.
I made up the plot,
And I discovered the real story.
All right there. Right then. And,
Like the world,
It would never repeat again.
Oh.
I really would like to have books
With their tree paper
Go the way of the dinosaur.
This is nearly it.
It is a place to really learn.
Will Internet become the dragon?
You know, the house dragon.
The oldest dragon. From China.
You know, the
Dragon of Peace holding
The Pearl of Everlasting Life.
History: In October 1993 there were a dozen or two users of the World Wide Web in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. I had asked Bob Berger (“Cowboy” from the Hack House Hackers) to set it up for me in my lab on a Sun Workstation, so I could see how it worked. Two days later I wrote this poem on the World Wide Web because I couldn’t get the first experience out of my mind. I knew this perfected kind of…
