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t a n g l e s , l i n k s , a n d w e b s

recently been started by Steve Jobs, who had founded Apple Computer and brought the first intuitive point-and-click, folders interface to personal computers. Ben Segal, our Unix and Internet evangelist, had mentioned that the NeXT machine had a lot of intriguing features that might help us. I asked Mike to let me buy one (bringing Ben with me for weight), and he agreed. He also said, “Once you get the machine, why not try programming your hypertext thing on it?” I thought I saw a twinkle in his eye.

By buying a NeXT, we could justify my working on my long-delayed hypertext project as an experiment in using the NeXT operating system and development environment. I immediately began to think of a name for my nascent project. I was looking for words that would suggest its new kind of structure. Mesh, or Information Mesh, was one idea (used in the diagram in the proposal), but it sounded a little too much like mess. I thought of Mine of Information, or MOI, but moi in French means “me,” and that was too egocentric. An alternative was The Information Mine, but that acronym, TIM, was even more egocentric! Besides, the idea of a mine wasn't quite right, because it didn't encompass the idea of something global, or of hypertext, and it represented only getting information out—not putting it in.

I was also looking for a characteristic acronym. I decided that I would start every program involved in this system with “HT,” for hypertext. Then another name came up as a simple way of representing global hypertext. This name was used in mathematics as one way to denote a collection of nodes and links in which any node can be linked to any other. The name reflected the distributed nature of the people and computers that the system could link. It offered the promise of a potentially global system.

Friends at CERN gave me a hard time, saying it would never take off—especially since it yielded an acronym that was nine syllables long when spoken. Nonetheless, I decided to forge ahead. I would call my system the “World Wide Web.”