dreamed of in the late ’70s as the goal—which was to build the great library—
could even start.
Livingston: That was always your goal?
Kahle: Yes, that was always the goal. We just had to do a couple things first. It
took a lot longer than I thought. We’re now in 2006, and it’s hard to believe how
pathetic things are. We don’t even have books online yet. I don’t know why the
world moves so slowly. Everybody says, “Oh, it’s moving so fast.” And it’s like,
“No, I don’t think so. It’s been forever.”
Livingston: Besides always running out of money, how did you find having your
own company different from Thinking Machines?
Kahle: Having your own company means that it’s much harder to blame somebody
else. If you are working inside a big company, you can always blame management,
marketing, engineering, or something. But, when you are running it,
you can’t, because it’s all your responsibility. I found that to be quite cathartic.
The East Coast also has a little more of an aesthetic of complaining, and so I got
a little bit over that, I guess.
Brewster Kahle 273
Another, I thought, was expressed really well by Don Yannias of Encyclopedia
Britannica. He said, “Now that I’m running Encyclopedia Britannica, I have to
be Mr. Sunshine every day.” Because people are looking to you, not just for the
ideas, but for the general attitude toward how to make the whole thing work.
Carrying a company is a lot of weight. You have to make sure that you keep on
the uptick—not just financially, but also make it so that it’s a fun environment
and people want to work there.
Livingston: Did you have any competitors back in the WAIS days?
Kahle: There were other systems around, but one thing I tend to do is do something
that is far enough out there that nobody in their right mind would possibly
want to do it. In general, I usually take things from the “you gotta be crazy”
period to the “of course.” And once it gets to “of course,” then there will be
competitors, and I’m done. Because usually what I want to do is just get other
people to do it. The best way to do that is to show that it’s possible.
So WAIS was all about trying to get other people to copy us. And they did,
and it worked great. And they did better at it, and flourished. Better web studios
than we were, server manufacturers and the people that made web
servers—they did much better than we did. But the idea on WAIS was to try to
guide the building of it, because WAIS wasn’t the goal. Building that company
wasn’t the goal. I wanted to get it so that publishing would happen on the Net,

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