[lenkite]

The world-wide web wasn't a "fairly obvious" idea at all. It only seems so in hindsight. Private networks are one thing, but a shared space offering a common, open way to host, publish, view and locate content that the entire world can participate it ?

Sure, eventually it could have happened but it may not have happened for several decades.

[lugu]

I'm am no history buff but several decades seems way off. A lot of the pieces were already there: addressing (FTP), hyperlink (hypertext), multi media documents, world wide network, ... IMO his contribution is the overall architecture.

[ab5tract]

Hypertext existed. Plan files existed. FTP already existed.

In fact, the only surprising feature of www is that no one bothered to include bidirectional linking, to disastrous consequence.