The Web and the Mainframe
The Egg PC from Desert Storm was a monster. No one could resist its seductive looks and performance once they laid hands on it. True to its name as the European Particle Physics Laboratory, they had ordered a massive batch of Egg PCs with the highest specifications, and one of them had been awarded to Tim Berners-Lee as a prize. It was recognition for his work in reorganizing the laboratory's systems and processes, enabling capabilities several times greater than before.
The Next Station and the Egg PC were fundamentally different from birth, and their performance gap was like heaven and earth. Even though the Next Station had a GUI, it was monochrome, limiting its graphical capabilities. Its CPU was also from Motorola's 68 series, which lacked versatility. The Egg PC was the opposite. Powered by an Intel 486, it supported a wide range of applications and delivered smooth performance. Moreover, thanks to its SVGA card rather than a standard VGA, it could display tens of thousands of colors simultaneously at high resolution.
But the most overwhelming advantage was Android Alpha. Its stability was slightly inferior to the Next Station's NeXTSTEP, yet in raw performance and elegance, Android Alpha held complete dominance. After two patches, its capabilities had grown even stronger, eliminating any lingering shortcomings. Though Tim Berners-Lee had only used the Egg PC for about two months, it had completely won him over. Naturally, the WWW he had been developing on the Next Station transitioned to Android Alpha as a matter of course. Beyond the performance difference, the Next Station's price was astronomical. At five thousand dollars per set, it was far beyond what ordinary people could afford. Egg PCs were somewhat expensive too, but since Android Alpha ran on IBM-compatible PCs, it operated flawlessly even on much more affordable machines.
"ID Technology is a for-profit company, and the program you've shown me was developed for commercial purposes, correct? However, my belief is that the internet and the WWW will generate far greater value when used by many people. That's why I intended to release the WWW-related technologies and access programs for free."
Just like Tim Berners-Lee.
"Ah! The proposal I wanted to make to ID Technology was joint development of the WWW. The free release remains unchanged, but there are several areas where ID Technology could benefit in proportion to the technical support I've received. I was also deeply impressed by the column you published a few days ago about the Information Superhighway. Before that, the Security Challenge was equally moving. But I never imagined Mr. Yoo would already have a commercially viable program completed…"
This man seemed rather impatient. Yoo Jae-won hadn't even given his answer yet, but Berners-Lee already assumed rejection.
"I agree with your thinking, Mr. Berners-Lee."
Though he had been writing with negative expectations, Tim Berners-Lee had not abandoned hope. Upon hearing Yoo Jae-won's agreement, he hurriedly replied without even deleting what he had already written.
"Really? The goal behind your WWW plan is to make internet access easier for more people, isn't it? I wholeheartedly agree with that purpose. Therefore, it would be best to release technologies like the WWW and HTML for free."
"Huh? Huhhh!!!"
It was a short, simple sentence. Yet through the three exclamation marks, one could feel how genuinely delighted Tim Berners-Lee was on the other side of the monitor. Then a thought suddenly occurred to Yoo Jae-won: in the next version of ID Talk, it would be excellent to allow users to exchange animated GIFs like moving emoticons for better emotional expression. It was a standard feature in 21st-century messengers, but he hadn't been able to include it in ID Talk yet due to limited resources. He would need to hire skilled illustrators and discuss collaborations with companies that owned famous characters like Disney, Marvel, and DC. Of course, he would also create ID Talk-exclusive characters and launch emoticons featuring them.
"Are you serious?"
"Of course. I'll send you the browser source code and documentation containing technical information about HTML. Use them freely. Just make sure to credit me as the creator. Ah, and are you short on funding? I'll provide financial support for WWW development as well."
"Good heavens! This is unbelievable!"
"I can't believe it. I don't know how many times I've blinked just to make sure I'm reading the text correctly!"
"Thank you! It feels like I've gained an army of a thousand men. Now I understand why there was so much praise for Mr. Yoo in the industry."
He must have been overjoyed, as the messages kept coming one after another. Although the WWW and HTML were cutting-edge technologies, they had the peculiar property that monopolizing them reduced their utility. As Tim Berners-Lee believed, these were technologies whose significance grew only when widely adopted by people. Confident he could conduct business through the internet whenever he wished, Yoo Jae-won shared all his completed work with Tim Berners-Lee.
"Ah, but since this is an agreement between a company and an organization, we should still draft a proper contract. Of course, I'll send the browser source code right now."
Yoo Jae-won opened the file manager and transmitted the browser's source code.
"Of course, that's only proper! I'll be coming to Korea soon!"
"Huh? You're coming from Geneva? The flight time to Korea from there must be enormous. Wouldn't it be better to just handle everything by fax?"
"No. There's no one else with whom I've been able to discuss the WWW so smoothly. I want to meet and talk about many things! Ah! Since you're running a large corporation, your schedule must be tight."
"It's not that bad. It's vacation time."
Between various meetings and administrative tasks, only Remington and Choi Kang-wook were busy. Yoo Jae-won himself had complete free time until March 1st.
"That's even better! Then I'll schedule my arrival in Korea for February 26th!"
"Understood. I'll see you then."
This was the first time he had met someone with even greater initiative than himself. Moreover, meeting a legend and building a relationship had been on Yoo Jae-won's bucket list. The fact that the man was coming in person made refusal impossible.
Good news kept coming. The mainframe Yoo Jae-won had ordered from IBM had finally arrived in Seoul. To ensure ultra-fast delivery, it had been loaded onto a cargo plane directly from the IBM factory in the United States and flown straight to Seoul. Customs clearance had also been completed quickly, so Yoo Jae-won rushed to Seoul with Kim Dae-seok.
"This is incredible!"
As soon as they entered the data center on the second floor of the Rodeo office, they saw a large cabinet-like machine with a black base and red accents. An IBM System 390. It contained no fewer than six 32-bit CPUs specially designed by IBM for mainframes. The model was the new ES/9000, with processing power more than four times greater than previous models. One shouldn't think of Intel or AMD CPUs. Being designed for mainframes, its size was enormous. A single motherboard larger than A4 paper held three palm-sized big chips, with ultra-high-speed SRAM mounted as cache memory. Each CPU could perform 15 million operations per second, and with six of them, the total reached 90 million operations per second by simple calculation. Heat generation was correspondingly massive, so a water-cooling system had been chosen. This was the top-tier model with six such processors. Memory capacity was 1GB. While it could be expanded to a maximum of 2GB, that was excessive for a PC communication server, so they had compromised by increasing the number of CPUs while reducing memory. The hard disk capacity was also an enormous 128GB. It was far too vast a space for a text-based PC communication server. A tape backup device was also connected, allowing daily generated data to be compressed and stored.
The operating system was the proprietary MVS, which shared roots with Unix when viewed broadly. Therefore, someone familiar with Unix could quickly adapt after learning the mainframe's unique functions.
"Is this… really something we're going to use?"
Lee Chan-soo raised his voice, his face flushed red. It was obvious he was extremely excited about the S390. That was understandable. During his time at Seoul National University, seeing a large-scale computer had been his dream. When the Cray-2S supercomputer was introduced at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, he had regretted not going to KAIST instead, where he might at least have caught a glimpse. Though it wasn't a supercomputer, this mainframe was powerful enough to completely captivate Lee Chan-soo's sensibilities as someone who loved big computers.
"Of course. I didn't buy it to enshrine like a sacred relic. I bought it to use. If we paid a high price, we need to extract value beyond that by operating it diligently."
Lee Chan-soo nodded at Yoo Jae-won's words. If something was expensive, one had to extract more than its worth. The professors who had treated computers like sacred objects, forbidding anyone from touching them, had been the strange ones.
"Pardon me, but aren't you a bit too focused on the machine?"
A new voice spoke, in English. Turning around, Yoo Jae-won saw a man wearing a blue jumper with the IBM logo. What stood out was his dark brown hair, with a clearly visible forehead.
"I'm Murray Campbell. I'm in charge of the S390 installation at your company's data center."
Murray Campbell? He looked quite young, so Yoo Jae-won hadn't recognized him immediately. Yet this man was also a legend in the IT industry, no less than Tim Berners-Lee. While the internet had greatly changed the world, artificial intelligence was another technology that had transformed it alongside it. There were three major inflection points in artificial intelligence research, listed in reverse chronological order: the birth of Omega in 2030, equipped with perfect self-learning capabilities. Though it lacked the self-awareness seen in movie AIs, it could perform nearly every task a human could. The second inflection point was AlphaZero, the foundation for Omega. AlphaZero was the final perfected form of AlphaGo, famous for defeating the world's top professional Go players in a game computers were thought incapable of conquering. The first inflection point was, of course, the event that demonstrated the possibility of computers defeating humans: when Deep Blue, a computer developed by IBM, defeated chess world champion Kasparov. Deep Blue was a large computer developed by IBM, and the project leader was Murray Campbell, standing right before him. His research on artificial intelligence was extensive, but he was also the foremost expert in parallel computing that maximized computer processing power.
"Chess! Kasparov!"
For Yoo Jae-won, who had worked on AI development and distribution in his previous life, Murray Campbell immediately brought chess to mind, like a conditioned reflex. Murray Campbell let out a gasp and looked embarrassed. Then he scratched his half-bald head and spoke.
"I'm embarrassed. It was just a small event, but I suppose the news has already spread to Korea."
He was referring to what had happened just five days ago, on February 22nd, at Harvard Memorial Hall in Cambridge, where IBM's Deep Thought had challenged chess champion Kasparov and been thoroughly crushed. Deep Thought could calculate 800,000 moves per second in chess, but that hadn't been enough to surpass the human champion. The match had ended in Kasparov's complete victory after only two hours. Upon returning to IBM, Murray Campbell had been despondent when he heard that engineers were being recruited to support the installation of a new mainframe at the famous Yoo Jae-won's headquarters, so he had volunteered. He had pulled this stunt because he felt he would only receive criticism for loitering around the company after losing at chess. As a bonus, he could also meet the genius Yoo Jae-won, who was famous in America.
"Still, it feels good that ID Technology's president remembers my name! It was worth coming on purpose."
"Huh? You applied specifically to see me?"
Yoo Jae-won was surprised by Murray Campbell's words.
"Haha! Of course. How could I miss such a good opportunity? When I return, I'll ask for just one autograph to brag about."
At Murray Campbell's hearty words, something flashed through Yoo Jae-won's mind. Just like with Tim Berners-Lee a few days ago, and now with Murray Campbell, his age or appearance wasn't a major issue for them. Perhaps because he was in Korea, where age was taken so seriously, he had been somewhat intimidated. There was something else too. Fame wasn't necessarily just a nuisance. The fact that both Tim Berners-Lee and Murray Campbell had sought out ID Technology on their own was entirely thanks to Yoo Jae-won's own fame.
'In that case, there's no need to strictly follow the regular process.'
Following the regular process certainly had its advantages. Even if there was nothing left to learn, it would serve as a small comma in his otherwise overly conspicuous trajectory. But worldwide fame wasn't always uncomfortable or bothersome. As he had just realized, it could also be a powerful tool for attracting living legends and hidden talents.
It was a small realization.