So I can't really call myself a physicist. But physicists spend a lot of time trying to relate macroscopic behavior of systems to microscopic laws, and that is the essence of the design of scalable systems. So physics was probably an influence. IW: What led you to conceive the WWW? TBL: I dabbled with a number of programs representing information in a brain-like way. Some of the earlier programs were too abstract and led to hopelessly undebuggable tangles. One more practical program was a hypertext notebook I made for my own personal use when I arrived at CERN. I found I needed it just to keep track of the -- how shall I say -- flexible? creative? -- way new parts of the system, people and modules were added on and connected together. The project I'd worked on just before starting WWW was a real-time remote procedure call, so that gave me some networking background. Image Computer Systems did a lot of work with text processing and communications -- I was a director before coming to CERN. IW: What elements in your background or character helped you to conceive WWW as a way to keep track of what was happening at CERN? TBL: Elements of character?! Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true, and the tendency to miss lunch. The former two probably helped. I think they are called Attention Deficiency Disorder now. ;-)