"The University of Minnesota charged their Gopher and now we're all playing the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputer Applications) Mosaic at UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)."

Champagne is quite far from Chicago, 200 kilometers, and the group drove south, on the way Andrew and Henry gave Song Yakop some of the latest trends in the Internet industry.

However, the technical terms in their words were a bit difficult for Song Ya to understand, so she could only keep interrupting, "Wait, wait, let's make it clear, what is a gopher?" And what is Mosaic? ”

"Gopher is an application layer protocol based on TCP/IP, which has its own interface and retrieval system, and users can access the Gopher server on the network through port 70 to find or download materials. It's easy to use, but unfortunately the number of users is increasing, the network is starting to congest, and the University of Minnesota has stopped providing free access since February. ”

Andrew explained, "Didn't our company just pay for the service? I don't know? Some music industry information is easy to find through Gopher's All Music database. ”

This kind of small expenditure Song Ya probably glanced at it and then signed it to agree, how can I remember a lot, but this is not the point, "Is it?" And what about NCSA Mosaic? ”

"NCSA Mosaic is a World Wide Web browser, which is still in beta, and we're in a volunteer program to help with ideas and everything." "He's cool and supports a graphical interface," Henry said. ”

"It's just very unstable." Andrew didn't like it very much, "It's useless to look too fancy, and the text-only Gopher client is already very handy." ”

Song Ya listened and asked questions in a half-incomprehensible way, and the time passed quickly, and the old Mike, under the guidance of Andrew, parked the car in a parking lot on the UIUC campus.

As soon as I got out of the car, a girl's inhalation voice came from the side, "AP? The girls at the public university seemed to be much more cheerful than the University of Chicago, and when they saw them, they covered their mouths in surprise, then they followed and pointed, and after gathering about five or six people, they gathered around and asked for autographs.

"It's okay, Mike."

Stopping the old Mike, Song Ya smiled and quickly signed their names on their clothes or books.

"Will you get back together with Fergie?"

"She really shouldn't have been seduced by her best friend."

"Will you transfer here?"

The girls took the opportunity to ask all sorts of questions.

"It's nice to meet, okay, yes, it's a nice day." Song Ya waved goodbye to them with clichés, some tall male athletes cast unkind glances, and the sports program of this school is also doing well, especially football and basketball, of course, there will definitely be no guys rushing over to bully them now.

"Go this way." The two technologists were familiar with the road and brought him into the NCSA, a small red four-story building.

After registering in the visitor book, I walked into a computer room with two rows of computers, and some raunchy white men in plaid shirts sat in front of the computers, intently typing on the keyboard, and when they saw the big stars coming in, they raised their eyelids, and then continued to be busy.

"They are all volunteers who come to participate in the exchange activities like us, but they are actually all here to have fun."

Henry whispered, they were all familiar faces, and they used to greet those people affectionately, "Sit here." Andrew asked Song Ya to sit down in front of a computer, which was already turned on, and there was only a lone gray browser client interface on the screen.

"I'll teach you how to do it."

Andrew began to teach hand in hand, "Do you see the URL bar above?" Knock, then colon, then double slash......"

Song Ya operated very smoothly, and immediately connected a WWW point after the double slash.

"Isn't that ever playing the World Wide Web?" Andrew smiled, and didn't take it to heart: "After the dot, follow NCSA, dot, Mosaic......"

After reporting the website, Song Ya knocked down the carriage without waiting for him to teach.

A web page with NCSA Mosaic graphic LOGO quickly swiped out, "It's fast here, we can't do it at home, this image is unnecessary, it always takes a long time to load......"

The technophiles are not at all uninspiring, and they feel that this big star is really here to understand cutting-edge technology, so they quietly come to Song Ya one by one to watch.

"Technology will move forward, and so will the speed." Someone disagrees, "Graphical interfaces, what you see is what you get is the general trend." ”

"You can do it with the mouse now." Andrew continued to teach.

"Oh."

Song Ya slid the mouse, randomly picked a blue hyperlink font, and moved the pointer to click the left button.

The page redirects and then gets stuck halfway through loading, "Huh? He looked at Andrew.

The technophile behind it let out a burst of laughter, "Normally, there are too many images on the page. Someone explained.

"Brush ......" As soon as Andrew's mouth opened, he saw Song Ya skillfully move the pointer to the circular refresh icon with arrows on the top of the client, and clicked.

The page loads from scratch again.

"Definitely played this." Henry was upset, probably feeling that the boss was pretending to be a pig and eating a tiger, "No one will know what that icon is for the first time you play." ”

"Uh......"

Song Ya didn't want to explain to him the familiar feeling of déjà vu that she occasionally had for no reason, "I didn't know this at all, it was the first time I had operated it." ”

Still stuck halfway through loading, he clicked the small triangle back button on the left side of the refresh icon, and the page returned to the previous homepage.

"These icons are easy to understand, right?" Someone behind him asked.

"yes." Song Ya replied that this familiar feeling should be caused by her own vague memory, so this kind of browser will become popular in the future? I heard that the NCSA is well funded, and the funding comes from the government, and it is related to the strong support of Senator Gore, and it is impossible to accept outside investors.

"Mark." Henry said to the man who had just replied, "Is it true that the graphics function is not considered to be removed?" ”

"Henry, don't talk about it, okay? HTML natively supports images. The man named Mark responded.

"This is Mark Anderson, and NCSA Mosaic was done by him and Bina." Andrew introduced Songya.

"Okay."

Song Ya threw away the mouse, stood up and shook hands with the other party, this Mark Anderson is even a few centimeters taller than himself, at least more than 1.95 meters, as burly as an athlete, he can't tell that he is a programmer who can work in NCSA, but more like the kind of white student who likes to bully weak classmates.

"Okay AP, are you here to play at UIUC? Or does the University of Chicago have a similar program? ”

The guy finished shaking hands with a wary look on his face.

"I don't know, I'm just a first-grader."

Song Ya smiled, "This browser is great, is it written?" ”

"Yes, Bina and I, just the two of us."

After a while, another programmer, Bina, arrived, a white man who was the standard programmer-looking, thin, bespectacled, clumsy communicator, and full of faces.

A group of people stood and chatted, and most of the time it was tech nerds who put forward various suggestions, and the atmosphere of discussion was very good.

"Probably the beta version of 1.0 will be released in June."

Bina gave an approximate timeline, "At that time, it should be possible to add features such as FTP and Gopher compatibility." ”

Song Ya took the opportunity to pull Andrew and Henry aside, "Help me ask them if they accept the investment, quietly." He said.

"This is the NCSA ......," the two of them looked like they had heard a joke, "I thought I just wanted to learn about the latest trends in the Internet, boss." Henry said.

"NCSA doesn't pay attention to this browser, right? Just give it to two programmers, isn't it feasible to put it out and turn it into commercialization? Song Ya asked.

The two tech nerds don't understand the commercialization thing, "I'll ask Bina, he's full-time, and Mark is just an undergraduate student who came to help." Andrew went to Bina for a private chat, and the other party refused directly.

"Keep in touch with this side." Song Ya had no regrets, and stayed to play for a while, and the more he operated, the more he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

Back in Chicago, I still kept reminiscing about the browser, "I've got to find someone who knows how to ask." He called Pal founder Jeffrey Hawkins.

"Web browsers, commercialization?"

Of course, Hawkins is knowledgeable, but he is not very optimistic, "Now those who engage in the Internet are idealists, all of them are desperately clamoring for freedom and free, and the Gopher at the University of Minnesota has been scolded a lot for not making any money after charging fees." Nowadays, network services are supported by the funds of universities and research institutions, and the military that used to engage in the ARPANET did not want to make money, so they could not find a way to make profits. Let's concentrate on hardware AP, our first generation of PDA products will come out soon, if we can invest money again, maybe we can be one step ahead of Apple......"

This guy took the opportunity to start asking for money again.

But he doesn't know that he is also a shareholder of Apple now, hmph, his subordinates are free to compete, whoever wins.

Song Ya hung up the phone, always felt unwilling, remembered something again, and hung up the phone to Reese, the general manager of A+ Pedal Company.

"Forgot the last time we talked about Silicon Valley real estate?"

Reese was obsessed with speculating on the land, "Although the land is acquired in Sunnyvale in the name of a high-tech project, the web browser is considered high-tech, right?" ”

This is a way, Song Ya groaned again.