The British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, known as the “father of the web,” will auction the source code for the World Wide Web as an NFT.
This includes the original archive of dated and timestamped files from 1990 and 1991, containing 9,555 lines of source code and original HTML documents that taught the earliest web users how to use the application.
The auction item also includes an animated 30-minute video of the code, a digital signature by Berners-Lee himself, and a letter written more than 30 years later in which he reflects on the process of creating the code and the impact it has had.
Titled “This Changed Everything,” the source code will be auctioned by international art broker Sotheby’s in London from June 23 to 30.
Bidding starts at $1,000 and the money will go to causes supported by Berners-Lee and his wife Rosemary Leith.
NFTs, which stand for non-fungible token, are data units stored on blockchains.
These make the units unique and allow the purchase and possession of representable objects, including works of art, photos, videos and other files.
Berners-Lee proposed the project in 1990, when she was working in a nuclear research laboratory in Geneva, after looking for a better way to transfer information between computers.
While the internet already existed at that time, Berners-Lee’s idea added an innovative way for computers to exchange information – websites.
For more information, read the original story in NPR.
