Expo (2) — The Birth of a Global Community
The KIN temporary club room was engulfed in an overwhelming wave of excitement while the Expo Special Division team was left in a collective groggy state after greeting the foreign press from Nervous Lee.
"We're... going to the Expo...?"
"KYAAAAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"
The club members, who had already been brainwashed by the endless flood of Expo-related news dominating newspapers and broadcasts, were losing their minds like religious fanatics. Unlike the shell-shocked Special Division, they were acting exactly like the summoners of foreign media they were.
"We need to start having some constructive discussion, seniors. What are we going to do if we show up to the next meeting unprepared and get rejected?"
The single word rejected instantly snapped everyone back to their senses. It seemed they still carried some trauma from that last encounter with the man called Manager Kim.
"But what exactly are we supposed to do at the Expo? I-seo, you need to explain this properly."
"Ah, right. I only showed you the materials but never actually explained them."
Ack. A beautiful girl's airheaded moment is a moe point, so it's forgivable.
"As you can see in the documents, the Advanced Communications Exhibition Hall is supposed to have dozens of computers set up for Mytel access, right? We're going to completely overhaul that plan."
"Mytel does feel a bit outdated... For something called 'advanced communications,' we should definitely be using the WWW."
"But to run a WWW-based service, don't we need to connect the network there? The construction is already finished. Can they really lay high-speed communication lines in just three months?"
"Look here. The Government Pavilion has booths from government-funded research institutes. Our KUST-affiliated Science and Technology Policy Research Institute is one of them. Naturally, their network is already connected to ours."
"So if we route through the Government Pavilion's network, the Information and Communications Hall can still use WWW-based internet?"
"Exactly. Once we get permission for that, the basic infrastructure work is done."
It really was a stroke of heavenly luck. Without this, there would have been so little we could actually do.
"Then we need to figure out what we're actually going to do with the WWW..."
"Right now, the only thing you can do with the WWW is visit foreign sites. What would Koreans who can't speak English even do there?"
This was exactly why web browsers in my original world came with built-in translators. But to make a high-performance translator, you'd need at least deep learning AI... and there was no way graphics cards existed in this era. So that was impossible. Looked like we'd have to rely on human translators after all...
"Seung-hyeop. Wake up. We have work to do."
"KYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!"
On the other side of the room, Yoo Ji-young, who seemed to have had the same thought as me, said something that made Park Seung-hyeop respond with dolphin-like high-frequency communication. As expected from a translator. He could even speak animal languages.
"First, I think we need an introductory page about the internet itself..."
"Doesn't CERN already have a page for that? Can't we just translate it?"
"Let's set it so that the first thing that loads when you open the browser is the KUST homepage, and put links there to both the Korea Telecom homepage and the CERN homepage."
"CERN supports language settings, right? If we make it so that when someone follows the link, it detects their IP and automatically switches to Korean if they're coming from a Korean address, that should work."
"I'll write that down. Seung-hyeop sunbae, please start the translation work right away."
"Sigh..."
Park Seung-hyeop no longer even had the energy to make deer-like groans. He obediently sat down in front of the computer. A truly exemplary slave's posture.
"But it still feels like there's nothing fun to do. People probably won't even feel like they're on foreign sites."
"Is there any way to make use of real-time interaction?"
"What if we made a Mytel-style service that works worldwide through the WWW..."
"THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!"
"?!"
A bulletin board site accessible from anywhere in the world! The world's first global public internet community, [Expo Special], was born.
About two months before the Expo opened, a single letter arrived for Kim Mu-sik, who had been living buried in books in Japan.
"... International mail? Didn't Mom just send one recently...?"
It wasn't from her. The sender's address and name were slightly different.
"Yoon I-seo...? Did the books I sent last time not arrive properly?"
A reasonable suspicion. But that too was wrong.
"Internet... WWW? How did she know I was interested in this?"
Kim Mu-sik was also the former head of the Mytel Programming Club. Of course he had a rough idea of how the current internet environment was developing and was highly interested in it.
"Heh, so these people got together. Looks like they're having fun."
This time he was only half wrong. The club was indeed fun, but they weren't just playing around.
After finally reading through most of the introduction, Kim Mu-sik continued and immediately found himself unable to contain his shock.
"The Expo...?"
Ever since its hosting had been confirmed, the news had been plastered everywhere, and recently even reports about the Expo had been exported overseas. Kim Mu-sik had seen some of it and knew just how massive an event it was, so he couldn't help but be stunned by Yoon I-seo's claim that they would be participating.
"A bulletin board from all over the world? Is that even possible with the WWW? It says if we try it first, post some messages, and show what foreign countries look like... That doesn't sound bad at all."
There was nothing bad about it. As an international student, he naturally felt homesick and nostalgic for his home country. Being able to communicate with people back home and even see photos of his hometown was more than he could ask for.
He immediately began promoting it to other international students—not just at his own university, but across the entire Japanese international student community. Japan had properly begun WWW experiments centered around universities, so every campus had at least one computer lab with WWW access.
Using the digital camera that was practically a necessity for studying abroad, he would take photos and upload them to the board called [Gallery] along with his thoughts and random comments. Checking what others had posted became the joy of Kim Mu-sik's life, helping him forget his longing for Mytel.
But that wasn't all. He mobilized his wide network of contacts and sent letters to Korean international students in the United States, Germany, France, and many other countries. Those students then promoted it within their own communities.
And the result was—
"What the hell? Why isn't this uploading?"
The temporary server, which had already burst past its dam, was now cracking at the seams.
"What is this?"
"Mmm... What's going on, Jeong-ah..."
Yoon I-seo, who had just woken up and was radiating maximum bedhead energy, rubbed her eyes and looked at Jeong-ah and Jeong-jun, who both wore serious expressions.
"This... the server database is acting weird."
"... Huh?"
If the server was acting up, it was a catastrophe. After all the preparation they'd put into this project, was it really going to start breaking down a month before the Expo?
Worse, since it was a server rented from Korea Telecom, if it failed because of them, the problem wouldn't just be the project—it would be money...
"It's saying the server is out of storage space? This? What?"
"...?"
After checking...
"Just how seriously are these people into online communities?"
It was a simple case of physical storage shortage.
"I-seo! Phone call!"
"No way..."
Yoon I-seo roughly snatched the phone and brought it to her ear, speaking in a calm voice.
"Yes. This is Yoon I-seo, vice president of the KIN club."
"... Yes."
"Ah."
Just as expected.
"What??? But we only promoted it to Japanese international students..."
Oh no. She urgently emailed Kim Mu-sik using the address they had exchanged in the previous letter. As expected, the answer was exactly what she feared.
No. Because of you, we're screwed.
Moreover, if what Kim Mu-sik said was true...
"This is a total pyramid scheme!!!!! What the hell has this guy been doing!!!!!!"
"That's just how he is. If he wasn't like that, he wouldn't have been club president."
"Aaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!"
That day, Kim Mu-sik earned the unique server-wide title of [The First Person to Make Yoon I-seo Tear Her Hair Out].
It took half a day for Yoon I-seo to request additional server capacity from Korea Telecom and temporarily restrict new posts.
"But this is actually pretty fun."
Yoon I-seo was killing time reading through the bulletin board, which had somehow turned into a global travel journal filled with photos of people striking random poses in front of famous tourist spots from around the world.
"This... After the Expo ends, if we just reuse the server source code to create a proper internet community, it might be a huge hit...?"
An internet community. In her original world, the main purposes of the internet had been information searching, community interaction, and gaming—these three things.
"I already sent a rough concept for a high-performance search engine to Nervous Lee last time... We're currently making the game. Should we really try making a community too?"
Of course, the internet infrastructure wasn't properly built yet, so it would be difficult right now... But once the internet became widespread in every household, wouldn't it be worth trying?
"I-seo, come here for a second and look at this."
"Coming~"
Well, there were already too many things to do right now. It was a bit premature to be getting excited about making something like that. That kind of thing could be thought about when the time came.
They finished the urgent tasks one by one, and time flew by in the blink of an eye. Finally, August arrived.
The Expo had begun.