World Wide Web Turns Ten

In August 1990, scientists Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau conceived the idea that would eventually develop into today's World Wide Web.

What a difference ten years makes in computer technology! SAAM's monument to technology is a sculpture by video art pioneer Nam June Paik.

This monolith houses twenty-five ten-inch Quasar color TV monitors all operating in concert. Neat and substantial, Technology shows Paik's genius for treating us to unexpected and unanticipated relationships. Who else would use a quatrefoil window to frame a TV set? Neither assemblage nor a surrealist work, the combination constitutes a new invention, an autonomous entity that can be viewed as a kind of microcosmic, technicolor summary of our civilization in both its glory and its ambivalence. As Paik put it, "One must know technology very well in order to be able to overcome it."

Source: Jacquelyn D. Serwer, "Personal Selection, Nam June Paik: Technology," American Art, Spring 1994, p. 91, quoted in the publication, National Museum of American Art, 1995 (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 1996).

Pictured: Nam June Paik, born Korea 1932, Technology, 1991, 25 video monitors, 3 laser disc players with 3 unique discs in a cabinet of various materials, 127 x 51 7/8 x 75 5/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.