It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Web in general and YouTube in particular have been taken over by cats: small cats, big cats, LOLcats, Grumpy Cats.
When Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web, first proposed this information highway 25 years ago, he did not foresee this turn of events.
Lee made that clear when he fielded questions at a Reddit AMA on Wednesday.
"What was one of the things you never thought the internet would be used for, but has actually become one of the main reasons people use the internet?" one Redditor asked.
"Porn," several Redditors prompted.
But Berners-Lee answered: "Kittens."
He also revealed that his parents were his early role models, and they'd "met building the first computer commercialized in the U.K."
Not one to rest on his laurels and pack it in, Berners-Lee, who was knighted in 2004 for his work, is still an active researcher. He is also an advocate for keeping information flowing free on the tool that he built a quarter century ago.