Echoes of Youth
The Desert Storm. That was why Yoo Jae-won had settled on leasing modems. Instead of forcing users to buy expensive hardware outright, he would rent them out for a modest monthly fee of just a few thousand won. Ordering in bulk from manufacturers to drive down production costs was another smart move, and he had already placed an order for ten thousand units. The ISDN usage fees were equally critical to the service’s success. The problem was that those fees could not be set unilaterally by DACOM or the Ministry of Communications; they required coordination with Korea Telecom. Because ISDN ran over telephone lines and key equipment had to be housed in Korea Telecom facilities, the carrier was pushing hard for a metered system that charged by the minute. ID Technology insisted on a flat-rate model where users paid a fixed fee regardless of usage. With real money at stake, the standoff was sharp and showed no sign of resolving quickly.
Factoring in all these variables, the official launch of Nextcom’s service looked most likely at the end of April or the beginning of May.
Hard work always made a meal taste better. Jae-won had reserved a table at a hotel restaurant whose chef was Italian, specifically for the two talents who had flown in from abroad, and the food was every bit as exquisite as he had hoped.
“I really envy Korea,” Tim Berners-Lee said.
“Me too,” Murray Campbell echoed.
They spoke in unison just as Jae-won was halfway through his meal. He snorted with laughter and nearly sprayed water across the table. Fortunately, he had not been chewing steak at the time. He quickly dabbed at the scattered droplets with a napkin; the spill was small and easily contained.
“An information-superhighway budget of thirty-five billion dollars? Can you even imagine that?”
“And the government is taking the lead on the project itself. On top of that, the whole thing was decided after reading your column. Listening to a businessman’s vision for the future is something we could never dream of in the United States.”
Their misunderstanding was so severe that Jae-won could not help laughing again. He had thrown out an enormous figure, yet nothing was actually confirmed—how much would truly be invested, or in what form. More than anyone, he knew that Korea’s real internal dynamics did not change overnight. When he had recently filed the business registration for Nextcom as a telecommunications service provider, a single phone call had arrived from the National Intelligence Service. They wanted multiple “super accounts” with unrestricted access to everything on the network, ostensibly for domestic counterintelligence work. In other words, they intended to conduct their own surveillance of the communications network.
PC-service censorship had existed during the Ketel era and would continue well into the late nineties. Even after the civilian government took power, people were still being arrested for posting criticism of the administration. If only the NIS had asked, Jae-won’s irritation might have remained manageable. But the police and prosecutors followed, then the Ministry of Communications’ Telecommunications Deliberation Commission, and of course the Defense Security Command was not to be left out. He had known all of this when he used Ketel; that was why he had limited himself to light chatting and never posted anything substantial.
Though deeply displeased, he decided to comply. The law left him no choice. Article 53 of the Telecommunications Business Act and its enforcement ordinance still governed “unwholesome communications,” and any service using telecommunications lines had no legal right to refuse. Only the public could change such rules; a single businessman’s resistance would achieve nothing. Public awareness would take time, so for now the best course was to operate within reality and wait for the right moment.
In any case, Jae-won did not correct their misconception. The more favorably they viewed Korea and himself, the easier it would be to recruit them later.
“Mr. Yoo, would it be all right if I make the announcement?” Tim Berners-Lee asked carefully.
He was referring to the public unveiling of the World Wide Web and HTML, which Jae-won had entrusted entirely to him. Since arriving in Korea on the twenty-sixth, the two men had spent several days in intense discussion and had finalized every technical concept needed to launch the WWW service. Berners-Lee’s ideas had contributed greatly, but Jae-won’s input had been equally indispensable. In particular, his proposal for a DNS—Domain Name System—to structure internet addresses had been groundbreaking. Four eight-bit numbers forming an IP address were purely numeric and impossible to distinguish meaningfully or remember. Berners-Lee had wanted addresses composed of English words. Jae-won had designed a server that would store every English internet address and instantly convert it to the corresponding IP whenever a request arrived. Without DNS, users would have had to manually map URLs to IPs on their first connection; the new system automated that process.
Jae-won had also released the source code for ID Web, the WWW browser, and had made substantial contributions to HTML itself. Considering all of this, Berners-Lee felt Jae-won should be the one to present the work, but Jae-won’s mind was made up.
“Nextcom and several other new projects are already behind schedule. Besides, the idea for the WWW has been yours since last year. The original creator should be the one to announce it.”
Berners-Lee had, after all, originated the World Wide Web. Jae-won was content to have added his own spoon to that achievement. As he had said, ID Technology already had far too many pressing matters. Nextcom had to be launched simultaneously in Korea and the United States, the appeal against Microsoft was still underway, and Microsoft’s delaying tactics suggested the case could drag on for years. He needed to focus on neutralizing those tactics and bringing the trial to a swift conclusion. From summer onward, ID Investment’s oil-futures trading would begin in earnest. The more capital the fund could attract, the better, and the person with the greatest name recognition at the company was Jae-won himself.
“Very well. If that is what you wish, I will do my utmost to introduce the WWW to the world. Still, if I fall short, I hope you will lend me whatever small assistance you can.”
“Of course. It goes without saying.”
Berners-Lee’s announcement would be followed, in the original timeline, by roughly three or four years before the web truly took off. Jae-won’s goal was to advance that timeline by about two years while simultaneously delaying the bursting of the IT bubble until its original moment. For the sake of faster internet adoption, he was prepared to cooperate with anything.
“IBM will also support the World Wide Web distribution initiative!” Murray Campbell declared enthusiastically.
Until now, Campbell had shown little interest in the internet. After seeing the technology Jae-won and Berners-Lee had built, however, he recognized the enormous potential hidden within the WWW. A document written as a simple text file transformed, through the ID Web browser, into something even a novice could navigate with ease. Moreover, any computer could display identical results simply by using a browser capable of reading HTML. Because the generous Jae-won had released ID Web’s source code, developing browsers tailored to IBM’s various machines became straightforward. Early adoption of new technology would only strengthen IBM’s position, so Campbell expected the company’s executives to lend their full support.
“Thank you. With IBM behind ID Technology as well, the WWW should reach the public much sooner.”
“Not at all. It’s in everyone’s interest.”
Campbell had also confirmed that the high-speed network technology underlying the internet could greatly benefit parallel processing. Cloud-computing technology was one of ID Technology’s future growth areas, though Jae-won had never mentioned it explicitly. Still, as one of IBM’s prized talents, Campbell possessed the insight to see ten steps ahead from a single clue, and he appeared to have grasped the basic concept.
For the moment, however, Campbell’s mind was occupied by the rematch against Kasparov. He was determined to build a machine more powerful than Deep Thought by leveraging the distributed-processing technology he had tasted through the network, and to challenge the champion once more.
Ah, what a shame.
Jae-won looked at the two men, each absorbed in his own thoughts, and could only click his tongue. They were truly the talent of a generation, and both had shown considerable goodwill toward him and ID Technology. He had even floated the idea of them joining the company, only to receive polite refusals. Both were deeply satisfied with their current work and had clear ambitions they wished to pursue. The small sliver of possibility they had left behind was the only thing that eased his regret.
The pleasant evening passed in the blink of an eye. Berners-Lee and Campbell returned home laden with generous gifts, while Jae-won remained in Seoul, optimizing the mainframe’s performance for Nextcom services and internal corporate networks. He also received reports from Choi Kang-wook and made tactical decisions. Before he knew it, March 2 had arrived—the day of the middle-school entrance ceremony.
Thanks to a small realization, his earlier resolve to attend middle school diligently had faded, and he walked to school with little enthusiasm. His expression had not been bright when he left home, but by the time he returned in the afternoon, it was considerably darker. Something significant had happened at school on his very first day.
From that day onward, a new layer of worry and gloom settled over Jae-won’s face. The incident that began on the entrance ceremony was troubling enough, but the deeper reason was that middle-school life bore almost no resemblance to the nostalgic version he had imagined while crafting his master plan in his previous life. Memories tended to be remembered fondly, and the contrast had grown sharper after encountering a teacher at Deokjin Elementary who still carried the romantic spirit of the eighties. Jae-won tried to manage his expression, but his parents had noticed long ago. Trusting their son deeply, they had chosen not to ask. Their patience finally ran out on the second weekend of March.
“Father, would you consider becoming the chairman of my middle school?”
During a weekend dinner with his parents, he finally voiced the sudden, out-of-the-blue suggestion he had been holding back.