Yesterday evening in London I spent a fascintating few hours with Marc Weber - one of the founders and leading spirits behind The World Wide Web History Project.   He and his colleagues are recording for posterity as much as possible of the early days of the web and the Project's own website is without doubt a unique meta space for anyone interested in understanding the "who, how, why and when" of the World Wide Web.  I told Marc how much I had valued being able to visit the railway museum in York and study the record of how objections and obstacles to the railway revolution had been overcome by the early entrepreneurs.  I found (and still do) these lessons from history, extremely pertinent and helpful in gaining insight into how to respond to some of the issues and arguments from those opposing the deployment of the new 'disruptive' infrastructure for the current information revolution.  Anyway, Marc was gracious enough to think that my story of the 'open public local access' challenge since the early 1980s was worth getting on the record and so so with his digital camera and recorder running for an hour or so, I related to him what happened in the UK (thanks to the unqique broadband-promoting UK public policy of the time) and also, what happened in 'my head' as I was able to develop ideas, visions and dreams of what future life might be like in an open access, symmetrical and interactive broadband world way before the web-giants we all know so well, made it a reality.  I only hope that in some future decade or century, energetic entrepreneurs will find Marc's diligent recording of the past as useful and inspiring as I found the record of the 19th century railway pioneers.

When we had dinner together, Marc impressed upon me just how much serendipity attaches to things working out the way they do.  I had forgotten about 'gopher' protocol - but he was able to remind me just how close that might have been to becoming what the www is today - it's a fascinating catalogue of accident, error and human mis-judgement that has landed us where we are today - as much as genius planning and foresight.

We should not forget that as we continue to push forward with trying to promote and accelerate the deployment of OPLANs in our communities.   24hours after being with Marc, I am in the City of Eindhoven (birthplace of Philips) in the Netherlands which I am advising on their ambitious but entirely realistic OPLAN vision.  Once again I am struck by the extent to which the current net neutrality issue - so prominent in the US at the moment - is absolutely part and parcel of the OPLAN view of the world. 
If you want to listen to something to help you think about that - then here you have!   Amusing if it weren't so serious!