NFT representing Tim Berners-Lee’s source code for the web to go on sale
Sir Tim Berners-Lee will sell an NFT representing the source code of the world wide web at Sotheby’s, the auction house has announced, more than 32 years after his first proposal for the project was dismissed by a supervisor as “vague, but exciting”.
The sale, proceeds from which will be used to benefit initiatives that Berners-Lee and his wife, Rosemary Leith, support, is the first time the auction house’s historic artefacts division has been able to sell such a “digital-native artefact”.
“Three decades ago, I created something which, with the subsequent help of a huge number of collaborators across the world, has been a powerful tool for humanity,” Berners-Lee said. “While I do not make predictions about the future, I sincerely hope its use, knowledge and potential will remain open and available to us all to continue to innovate, create and initiate the next technological transformation, that we cannot yet imagine. NFTs (non-fungible tokens), be they artworks or a digital artefact like this, are the latest playful creations in this realm, and the most appropriate means of ownership that exists. They are the ideal way to package the origins behind the web.”
Going up for auction in a standalone sale, This Changed Everything will be a single-edition NFT, bundling four artefacts. It will include the original time-stamped files containing the source code written in 1990 and 1991; an animated visualisation of the code being written; a letter written by Berners-Lee; and a digital “poster” of the full code.
