CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
February 2000, Vol. 42, No. 2
Tim Berners-Lee is a man of vision and a man of principle. He values the growth and continued evolution of the Web above personal monetary gain. He speaks a language filled with terminology familiar to librarians: standards, cooperation, information delivery, and intellectual freedom. He is not difficult to admire.Unfortunately, because he is a collaborator, not a competitor, his written account of how the Web came to be is not a "thriller." What can you expect from someone who gives his invention a name that will be abbreviated with the nine-syllable acronym "WWW?" You might assume that this is a man more interested in accurately describing his creation than in marketing it. You would be correct. Even his use of the word "Web" is out of synch with the popular image of an electronic spider's web emitting sparks as it engulfs the planet. For Berners-Lee, the word "web" is a mathematical term.
In the computer world, everyone knows who "Bill" is. In contrast, we have Tim Berners-Lee, father of the Web, refusing to dub his invention "The Information Mine" because it might be nicknamed "TIM." Larry Ellison and other captains of the computer industry flaunt their wealthy lifestyles. Berners-Lee, refreshingly different, was deeply hurt when American reporters expressed stunned disbelief upon learning that he had not "cashed in" on his innovations. Berners-Lee scheduled an important international conference so it would not conflict with the expected birth date of his child. Can anyone imagine Steve Jobs doing the same?
While Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and Intel were busy hyping the promises of a shining, but vague digital future, Berners-Lee quietly demonstrated the future to knowledgeable doubters. Apple and Microsoft, conveniently forgetting the contributions of researchers at Xerox PARC, patted themselves on the back for pioneering the graphic user interface. Berners-Lee, on the other hand, made a pilgrimage to the Palo Alto Research Center and paid homage to innovators (Ted Nelson and Doug Englebart, among them) who had pioneered hypertext and telecommunications technologies.
Do not attribute Berners-Lee's modesty and low-key demeanor to naivete. He understands how organizations function and is a keen observer of human beings. He started his work on the Web in Geneva at CERN, a research facility for the study of particle physics. Berners-Lee was sharp enough to exploit CERN's resources and earn a living, while developing the Web and introducing it to an international audience. Years later, he quickly sized up representatives from the University of Illinois' NCSA (the National Center for Supercomputing Applications), noting that they were more interested in promoting their remarkable Web-browser, Mosaic, than they were in expanding the Web. To keep the Web open, international, and free, he convinced CERN to formally renounce any ownership or licensing rights that it might hold in relation to the Web. He founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to attract commercial and non-profit developers, but also to make certain that the Web continued to reflect his vision.
Berners-Lee had a vision of all information, on all computers, everywhere in the world, linked together in a non-hierarchical way. He recognized in hypertext and the Internet the means for achieving that end. He understood that the system must be decentralized in order to accommodate all computers and to facilitate the adding of links. Remarkably, most people working in hypertext had no interest whatsoever in the Internet. The Internet folks were already linking one computer to another with FTP, and did not see the value of hypertext. However, Berners-Lee was relentless: defining protocols like HTTP and HTML, giving demonstrations, attending conferences, and spreading the word via the Internet. An early convert was Louise Addis, a librarian at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California. Her interest in making her institution's documents available to researchers around the globe led to the creation of the first Web server outside of CERN.
The man who invented the Web is not quite done with it. The Web of the future will be easier to use, and it will, in many ways, operate itself. Newer technologies and saner regulations will keep us linked permanently to our networks. New search engines will apply logic, instead of simply finding documents containing language that matches the wording of our requests. Yes, our Web browsers will be integrated into our operating systems. No, no one company will have a "vertical monopoly" by which it can force down our pipelines access only to products from companies that have paid for access to those pipelines. The world will be a better place for everyone. Universal Web access will mean communication and understanding across geographic, political, religious, and social boundaries. Berners-Lee will make collaborators of us all. He will not rest until the Web accomplishes his ultimate goal, "to support and improve our weblike existence in the world."
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