- to invent two killer ideas – the language that describes a web page (HTML) and the transfer protocol (HTTP) to allow access to the web page over the Internet.
- to make these specifications freely available for anyone to use.
It’s probably that last point that is the key to the incredible rise of the Web since the first page was put up on 6th August 1991. The specifications (HTML and HTTP) are "good enough" – in other words, they could have been better engineered. Indeed, Clay Shirky called HTTP and HTML "the Whoopee Cushion and the Joy Buzzer of the Internet". For example, there is nothing in the transfer protocol to help test for, and repair, broken links to web pages. How many times have you clicked on a link, only to find the page has disappeared?
So the form of Hypertext that we have ended up with is by no means perfect, just good enough. There was an idea for a form of Hypertext that preceded the Web: Project Xanadu, proposed by Ted Nelson back in 1960. However, Xanadu has turned out to be the equivalent of the superior Betamax video format losing out in the market to the "good enough" VHS.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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