[Chris Wilson] I'd like to welcome back on stage the W3C's Chief Executive Officer,
Seth Dobbs, to make some introductory remarks and kick off a great set of talks, thank you.
[Seth Dobbs] Alright... Hello, thank you everybody.
Before we get started, mostly for my own curiosity, quick show of hands.
Who has been part of W3C for 25 years or longer?
Big thank you.
Alright, who has been part of W3C for a year or less? I'm not alone. Thank you. Thank you.
It's great to see, right? Just the continue – just evolution of this
organization. So, thank you all of you whether you've been here for
weeks, months, decades, from the very beginning, just appreciate all of
you being a part of this amazing project that we call the web.
So, here we are now at 30 years.
We've come really far, as Chris mentioned in that time, and as we saw in the video, we evolved as a
consortium, as an industry and as a society. And that video really
reminds me of how quickly we can take change for granted, right?
New innovations, even the most impactful changes, rapidly become expected
part of our lives and we get mad when we're not there. When they're not there.
And because of that, I think it's great to take a moment like
this to take a step back and really just think about what we've
accomplished in the past and what's in front of us still and maintain
that perspective. And that's why we have the theme of yes, today's
better than yesterday and tomorrow is better than today. So thinking about today being better than yesterday.
It's been a long time since I
used the dial up modem but thanks to that video and whoever put that
together of reminding us of the joy of that. I actually got my first dial up
experience working through college on a 1200 baud modem.
For those who don't actually know what I'm talking about, you're fortunate,
but imagine just a three megabyte file. It would take six hours to
transfer three megabyte file on a 1200 baud modem.
And I had a friend in college who had a 400 baud modem which just gets to madness when you
think about it. If you'd wanted to transfer that same 3 megabytes file, from here in
Anaheim to someone in Tokyo, it would have been faster to save it on several floppy disks, put it on an airplane
and fly it there, than to try transfer it than on a 400 baud modem. And of course, that file
itself would have been 190 times larger than the extended memory I had on my first Sinclair computer.
So, things have really changed, and all of that is easily, and for the most part I think rightfully, forgotten today.
Because, now, look at what we can do. We can exchange information, images and movies,
thoughts and ideas, money and services. We can interact with our
government, we can interact with our friends, we can make new friends.
All in the blink of an eye and thanks in such large part to the work
done through this consortium and all of you, its members and member organizations.
Beginning here, as Chris mentioned, wasn't easy. It did not just happen overnight. It's been thirty years.
And there's been a lot of challenges along the way. Some that are technical, social and so forth.
And not the least of which was mentioned in the video was the dotcom boom and bust.
I think about that a lot because, in fact, I think to date, the web has been one of
the most overhyped technologies in my career.
Because if you look at the impact, certainly financially hyped, if you
look at the impact of the chart that I have up there, it hits the U.S. market
at an incredible peak at 2000, and crashed. And it took more
than ten years to recover.
So that's – that was sort of the dotcom boom and bust, and yet, here we are today. Right? We've changed the world and we
continue to.
And that's why I believe that tomorrow really can continue
to be better than today, in spite of any challenges in front of us, but
it's not just a given. And there's some out there, critics and observing
that the web is becoming a vehicle more for interconnecting machines than
humans, with bots creating content for other bots. To scan and analyze,
to generate more content for more bots but we, here, we know this isn't
the end point. It's not the goal of what we're trying to achieve in
this consortium with the web. We know there's more work to do to continue
to further our mission to interconnect humanity.
So as we look to making
tomorrow better than today, I think a lot about our principle of a web
for all. And to me, I believe that the power of this principle comes
down in large part to what we're capable of wanting. What we as citizens
of the world, we as a consortium, we here have helped build a world of
connections, of knowledge, of generative capabilities but as I think
about the context of web for all, what does the web itself mean in the
future? I shared those thoughts about the dotcom bubble in part to remind us
all that excessive hype about an idea doesn't mean the idea itself is bad.
It just means there's sort of the wrong focus, the wrong sort of constructs we
don't have the right things in place yet. And I think we have a
responsibility to think about that. To think and rethink of what the web
is and most importantly, what does humanity need it to be? And also, I
think about the all part of the web for all. Because we are leaving
people behind right now. Not by intent, but there are parts of the world
that don't have access to the web. There are parts of the world where
there is access to the web, but some members of society are unable to
for any number of reasons.
So, I ask you all: what more are we capable of wanting? What of
enablement and empowerment though the web of bringing humanity closer together of analyzing who is
being left behind, with this progress that we've made, and how can we
change that? I believe our brightest days are still yet ahead of us. And
that the great public good of this project is still in full force, we're
shifting gears into a new phase to become even more impactful. And I
believe the world needs us to do this. We need it from all of us, from
all of you.
It's a privilege to be amongst so many that have created an
incredible history, and I'm glad to have the chance to honor our
community tonight for all that you've done. I think it's perhaps an even
greater privilege to now be amongst so many that will be part of writing
the future history of the web and technology that is yet to be written and
that is with all of you. So, without further ado, I will turn it to others
that have celebrated all we have done. Thank you for everything.