elected representatives / principals, in
fact, everything is coming around. (...) Concerning the
relationship with other media, I think we need to look
backwards. Contrary to the words of alarmists in previous
times, radio didn't kill music or the entertainment industry
any more than the cinema did. Television didn't kill radio or
cinema. Nor did home videos. When a new medium arrives, it
makes some room for itself, the others adjust, there is a
transition period, then a 'convergence'. What is different with
the internet is the interactive dimension of the medium and its
possible impact. We are still thinking about that, we are
watching to see what happens.

Also, as a medium, the net allows the emergence of new concepts
in the field of communication, and on the human level, too -
even for non-connected people. I remember when McLuhan arrived,
at the end of the sixties, with his concept of 'global village'
basing itself on television and telephone, and he was
predicting data exchange between computers. There were people,
in Africa, without television and telephone, who read and
understood McLuhan. And McLuhan changed things in their vision
of the world. The internet has the same effect. It gives rise
to some thinking on communication, private life, freedom of
expression, the values we are attached to, and those we are
ready to get rid of, and it is this effect which makes it such
a powerful, important medium."

= "The dream behind the web"

Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1990. Pierre Ruetschi, a
journalist for the Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve, asked him in
December 1997: "Seven years later, are you satisfied with the
way the web has evolved?". He answered that, if he was pleased
with the richness and diversity of information, the web still
lacked the power planned in its original design. He would like
"the web to be more interactive, and people to be able to
create information together", and not only to be consumers of
information. The web was supposed to become a "medium for
collaboration, a world of knowledge that we share."

In a short essay posted on his webpage, Tim Berners-Lee wrote
in May 1998: "The dream behind the web is of a common
information space in which we communicate by sharing
information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a
hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or
global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part
of the dream, too, depende