Tim Berners-Lee
From Wikinfo
Timothy John Berners-Lee (TimBL or TBL to his admirers) (b. June 8, 1955) is the inventor of the World Wide Web and head of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees its continued development.
He was born in London, England, and is an alumnus of Oxford University.
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Proposal and Prototype
In 1989, Berners-Lee proposed a project to his employer CERN, based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. With help from Robert Cailliau he built a prototype system named Enquire. Later he used similar ideas to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first browser (called WorldWideWeb and developed on NeXTSTEP) and the first web server.
The First Website
The first web site Tim built (and therefore the first web site) was at info.cern.ch and was first put online on August 6, 1991. It provided an explanation about what the internet was, how to get your own browser, how to set up your own web server and so on. It was also the world's first web directory, since Tim maintained a list of other web sites apart from his own.
No Royalties
While the component ideas of the World Wide Web are simple, Berners-Lee's insight was to combine them in a way which is still exploring its full potential. Perhaps his greatest single contribution, though, was to make his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due.
Weaving the Web
In his book Weaving the Web, several recurring themes are apparent:
- It is just as important to be able to edit the web as browse it. (Wiki is therefore a significant step in the right direction, although Berners-Lee considers it merely a shadow of the WYSIWYG functionality of his first browser.)
- Computers can be used for background tasks that enable humans to work better in groups.
- Every aspect of the internet should function as a web, rather than a tree structure. Notable current exceptions are the domain name system and the domain naming rules managed by ICANN.
- Computer scientists have a moral responsibility as well as a technical responsibility.
See Also
- Semantic Web, TBL's current project.
External links
- TBL's home page
- TBL's original proposal to CERN
- TBL's book "Weaving The Web" which details his views on the history and future of the web.
- The W3 History page
- Archive of the world's first web page (November 13, 1990)]
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Tim Berners-Lee" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee November 29, 2003
