The World Wide Web is officially being auctioned off as an NFT.
Tim Berners-Lee, the British scientist who invented the internet in 1989, has teamed up with Sotheby’s to sell the original copy of the web’s first browser from 1990 as part of Sotheby’s “This Changed Everything” auction. For those living off-grid, this means you could purchase the original copy of the ‘WWW’, which sits in the upper left corner of your web browser (because why not?)
In a statement, Berners-Lee discussed his creation of the internet. “Three decades ago, I created something which, with the subsequent help of a huge number of collaborators across the world, has been a powerful tool for humanity,” he said. “While I do not make predictions about the future, I sincerely hope its use, knowledge, and potential will remain open and available to us all to continue to innovate, create and initiate the next technological transformation that we cannot yet imagine.”
Altogether, the single-edition ‘digital native-artefact’ will include four pieces: the original 1990 source code, an animation of the code being written, a letter written by Berners-Lee, and a digital poster of the full code. According to the scientist, non-fungible tokens are ‘the ideal way to package the origins behind the web’ and ‘the most appropriate means of ownership that exists’.
Recently, NFTs have taken over the internet. In addition to the heavy amount of memes and tweets being auctioned off, model Cara Delevingne dropped an NFT replica of her vagina, with all proceeds going towards LGBTQIA+ organisations, supermodel Kate Moss released a three-part NFT series of intimate artworks, and Andy Warhol’s 1985 preserved files sold as NFTs for a total of $3.4 million.
Bidding for Berners-Lee’s artefacts will start at $1,000 (£710) on June 23 at Sotheby’s, with all proceeds going towards initiatives which the scientist and his wife, Rosemary Leith, support.
