From June 23 to 30 Sotheby’s will auction the 9,555 lines of source code that form the basis of the World Wide Web.
The code was written by British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 and 1991, and will be tied to an NFT, a smart contract that proves the code’s authenticity and unique right of ownership. The files can be accessed by the buyer through the NFT, which will contain links through which they can be viewed online or downloaded to a computer. The winning bidder will also receive a letter from Berners-Lee “reflecting on the code and the process of creating it”, according to a release, with a 30-minute video created by a graphic designer that shows the code being written.
The buyer will also receive a “digital poster” that contains all 9,555 lines and a graphic of Berners-Lee’s physical signature. The starting bid will be $1,000 (about R13,800).
“At the root of it is the original source code for the world wide web,” said Cassandra Hatton, global head of Sotheby’s science and pop culture department. “We decided that the original, time-stamped and dated files were the core of the package, and then there were some supplementary items added to help buyers to more easily visualise and grasp what’s being sold.”
While working at research laboratory the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland in the late 1980s, Berners-Lee proposed an information management system that his boss judged “vague, but exciting”.
Undaunted by this less than full-throated endorsement, Berners-Lee eventually wrote the implementations of three languages and protocols, which fill most of the 9,555 lines of code. Included are the origins of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers).
The code being auctioned at Sotheby’s also contains original HTML documents that served as a user’s manual.
The code being auctioned at Sotheby’s also contains original HTML documents that served as a user’s manual. “The year 1989 is widely given as the date for the birth of the world wide web,” said Hatton. “But I was just talking with him earlier and that was the year he submitted the proposal for it, but the actual code for the files [was] written between 1990 and 1991.”
Berners-Lee approached Sotheby’s in April, Hatton said, with the idea to auction off the code. The files have been stored in a tar archive (an early form of file compression) that has preserved the original time stamps. Proceeds will go to “initiatives” supported by Berners-Lee and his wife, Rosemary Leith, according to a Sotheby’s.
The sale is the latest in a string of objects, concepts, artworks and ownership stakes to be sold connected to NFTs, with varying success.
Given NFTs are effectively an authentication tool, their attachment to some objects has proven unpersuasive to some. Replicas of physical paintings connected to NFTs did not sell well; a recent blowout sale greeted an unlimited edition of artworks made by US contemporary artist Daniel Arsham.
Given code is an abstraction to the average collector, Hatton said attaching this one to an NFT is logical.
“There are very many things that have NFTs slapped on that make no sense to me,” she said. “But this happens to be something that would otherwise be impossible to sell or to have any ownership over.”
Berners-Lee echoed that sentiment. “NFTs, 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.”
— Bloomberg News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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