The web is still young. Its pages are thin, its connections fragile, its ambitions modest. Most who arrived early treat it as a curiosity or a billboard. They are wrong.
This is not a medium for broadcasting the same tired messages. It is a place where anyone can construct something that lasts, something that others can enter, alter, and extend. The tools are crude, but the invitation is total.
We have spent enough time reading about what the network might become. The moment has arrived to stop describing and start assembling. Every line of markup, every linked idea, every small shared space is an act of construction.
Those who wait for permission or for perfect conditions will find the doors already taken. The builders move first. They accept the broken links, the slow modems, the uncertain audience. In return they receive something rare: the chance to shape the early grammar of a new public square.
Build plainly. Build strangely. Build what you wish existed. The rest will follow.
San Francisco, 1997