Sir Tim Berners-Lee Stars in Olympic Opening Ceremony 
fitting the scence: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19021660" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19021660</a><p>Long PR story short: RPC was prevalent, that is how you control(led) your stuff remotely. Like Tim. Today, if you'd ask for a NeXT-like toy, you'd be denied were you an average Eastern. But western equivalent asked for it and got one, and put the gopher link address ptr in the reserved field of the text font properties (where things like bold and italics properties are stored) and voilà. You can also hire a cheap student to actually write the web client to be cross platform (its true virtue/value). Thanks to Nicola Pellow, of whom almost nobody knows about. Not to mention Groff, doing his compulsory civil service. Would the "web" have just run on NeXT, it would be long extinct, let alone take off.<p>On linking and hypertext: all post-war era stuff is spin. The real stuff comes from Belgium:<p>For ADD-ers: <a href="http://youtu.be/qwRN5m64I7Y" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/qwRN5m64I7Y</a><p>The story: <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/paulotlet" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/paulotlet</a><p><a href="http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/forgotten_forefather_paul_otlet" rel="nofollow">http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/forgotten_forefather_paul...</a><p>"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper<p><a href="http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en" rel="nofollow">http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en</a><p>The answer is a nice PR story on the web --
<a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_%28public_relations%29#Techniques" rel="nofollow">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_%28publi...</a><p>On values at CERN, as a warning for non-western members:<p>"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y)" [where Y>X]<p>source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report<p>ISBN: 9290831693 <a href="http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264" rel="nofollow">http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264</a>