When you understand things, there's no more magic.

Any enterprise CEO really ought to be able to ask a question that involves connecting data across the organization, be able to run a company effectively, and especially to be able to respond to unexpected events. Most organizations are missing this ability to connect all the data together.

Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here: private ownership vs. open source, and so on.

Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.

Forming of a web of information nodes rather than a hierarchical tree or an ordered list is the basic concept behind HyperText.

The most important thing that was new was the idea of URI-or URL, that any piece of information anywhere should have an identifier, which will allow you to get hold of it.

It was the academic community who wired up their universities so it was put together by smart, well-meaning people who thought it was a good idea.