Robert Cailliau quotes

Robert Cailliau is a Belgian computer scientist renowned for his pioneering work on the development of the World Wide Web. Alongside Tim Berners-Lee, he contributed significantly to the creation of the foundational protocols and concepts that underpin the modern internet. He has been a strong advocate for open access and continued innovation in information technology. Here are 14 of his quotes:

At one point, CERN was toying with patenting the World Wide Web.

Robert Cailliau

What is hypertext? It is a method of giving a text more depth, structuring it, and letting the computer help you explore it. Links, like we know today - you see some blue underlined word and you click on it and it takes you somewhere else. That's the simplest definition of hypertext.

Robert Cailliau

I'd like the reader to decide if he is willing to pay minute sums for content. I'd like the economics of web to be controlled between authors and readers, not advertiser.

Robert Cailliau

Since the web is totally worldwide, we need a set of behavioural rules, laws they are commonly called, that are accepted worldwide. There is a big difference as to how things are treated in the U.S. and Europe and Asia.

Robert Cailliau

If you operate a TV or radio station, you have to have a license. It has nothing to do with fundamental freedom. It has to do with protection of the average citizen against abuses.

Robert Cailliau

There was a time when the community that was on the Net was homogenous and civilized. Now it's not. We're in the middle of chaos. It may calm down. But the alternative is that there's a total meltdown of the system and that it becomes unusable. That would be a catastrophe.

Robert Cailliau

If I sign up for Facebook and want my account destroyed, it is impossible. They keep tabs on you; there will always be a trace.

Robert Cailliau

Because I'm a synesthete I see characters in colors and I perceive a W as green.

Robert Cailliau

I'm not on Twitter, nor Facebook, or LinkedIn, or any of these systems, because they suck in your soul and they will not let you go. Try to get out of any of them, and you will see. They are just like some religions where apostasy is punished by death.

Robert Cailliau

The Web is actually a coming together of three technologies, if you like: the hypertext, the personal computer, and the network. So, the network we had, and the personal computers were there, but people didn't use them, because they didn't know what to use them for, except maybe for a few games.

Robert Cailliau

We mustn't forget we chose the name 'WWW' before there was even one line of code written. We could do that because the Internet as an infrastructure was already there.

Robert Cailliau

The forced influence of advertising has given us completely useless TV. You don't want that on the Net. But most on-line information providers need to attract advertising - which slows download times and clutters the screen with windows.

Robert Cailliau