If you can read this review (and voice your opinion about his book on Amazon.com), you have Tim Berners-Lee to thank. When you've read his no-nonsense account of how he invented the World Wide Web, you'll want to thank him again, for the sheer coolness of his ideas. One day in 1980, Berners-Lee, an Oxford-trained computer consultant, got a random thought: "Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked?" So he created a system to give every "page" on a computer a standard address (now called a URL, or Universal Resource Locator), accessible via the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), formatted with the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and visible with the first browser, which did the trick of linking us all up.
He may be the most self-effacing genius of the computer age, and his egalitarian mind is evident in the names he rejected for his invention: "I thought of Mine of Information, or MOI, but moi in French means 'me,' and that was too egocentric.... The Information Mine (TIM) was even more egocentric!" Also, a mine is a passive repository; the Web is something that grows inexorably from everyone's contributions. Berners-Lee fully credits the colorful characters who helped him get the bobsled of progress going--one colleague times his haircuts to match the solstices--but he's stubbornly independent-minded. His quest is to make the Web "a place where the whim of a human being and the reasoning of a machine coexist in an ideal, powerful mixture."
Hard-core tech types may wish Berners-Lee had gone into deeper detail about the road ahead: the "boon and threat" of XML, free vs. commercial software, VRML 3-D imaging, and such. But he wants everyone in on the debate, so he wrote a brisk book that virtually anyone can understand. --Tim Appelo
This lucid but impersonal memoir conveys some vital history and intriguing philosophy concerning the Internet, written by the man who invented such ubiquitous terms as URL, HTML and World Wide Web. British-born physicist Berners-Lee is now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which is based at MIT and sets software standards for the Web. In the late 1980s, he wrote the first programs that set up the Web, thus revolutionizing the Internet by allowing users to hyperlink among the world's computers. It was a quantum conceptual leap, and not everyone instantly understood it (some researchers had to be convinced that posting information was better than writing custom programs to transfer it). The release of graphical browsers such as Netscape Navigator made the Web much easier for home users to navigate and led to the commercialization of the Net. Although Berners-Lee calmly eschewed opportunities to get rich, he doesn't subscribe to the notion, common among pre-Web denizens of the Internet, that commercialization is a pox upon cyberspace. After short takes on current issues like privacy and pornography, Berners-Lee moves into prediction and prescription: the Web needs more intuitive interfaces and integration of tools, "annotation servers" that allow comments to be posted on documents and "social machines" that enable national plebiscites. And while he's no digital utopian, he thinks an Internet that balances decentralization and centralization can contribute to a more harmonious society. Berners-Lee's tone is more lofty than quotidian. He'd rather muse about the benefits of decentralization that his revolutionary technology makes possible than respond to Internet skeptics and critics. But he was very, very right a decade ago, and he's well worth reading now. First serial to Vanity Fair; 7-city author tour; 25-city radio campaign.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Few inventions have had as astonishing an impact on our everyday lives as the World Wide Web. And it's probably safe to say that most web users have never heard of its creator, Berners-Lee, recently hailed by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest minds of the century. What may be even more astonishing is that Berners-Lee has never tooted his own horn or tried to make a fast buck off of his creation like so many other inventors in the silicon age. At last, the reclusive Berners-Lee recounts the events leading up to his creation of the web, fusing hypertext and internetworking into the most dramatic development in communications since the printing press. In this important work, he also shares his personal vision of the web, what's right and wrong with it, and what its future may hold for us. Essential for most libraries.AJoe J. Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Scientific American
Sometimes it seems that, as Athena is said to have sprung fully armed from the brow of Zeus, the Web sprang fully matured from some electronic brow. Not so. It originated from a concept in Berners-Lee's mind and matured slowly. There was, he says, no "Eureka!" moment. Instead: "Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked, I thought [in 1980]. Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which anything could be linked to anything." The structure he envisioned would overcome the incompatibility among computers that made them unable to communicate with one another.
Berners-Lee is still shepherding that vision as director of the World Wide Web Consortium while he occupies the 3Com Founders chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science. He describes the evolution of the Web and considers the problems that have arisen as it has matured, including privacy, encryption, filtering and trust among users. As for the future of the Web, he has a two-part dream. In the first part, "the Web becomes a much more powerful means for collaboration between people." In the second, the collaborations extend to include computers. "Machines become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web--the content, links, and transactions between people and computers."
He doesn't have the stature, the name recognition, or the billions of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but modest, intelligent, capable Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and now directs the MIT-based consortium that helps define protocol, make recommendations, and "lead the Web to its full potential." He straightforwardly recounts the Web's origins, beginning with his late-'80s work in Switzerland, where he conceived a cross-platform program for sharing documents. Key to establishing such a program were agreed-upon protocols that would allow decentralization yet be compatible with Unix, NeXT, and, later, Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Berners-Lee developed URL, HTTP, and HTML--protocols instrumental in the success of the Web--and by Christmas 1990, his invention went live. Not until the February 1993 release of Mosaic, the first widely distributed Web browser, however, did the Web become a sensation. Next, Netscape and Microsoft entered the fray, and the rest is history. Like an evangelist, Berners-Lee preaches the Web's capability for changing the world even more than it already has. Benjamin Segedin
From Kirkus Reviews
The inventor of the World Wide Web tells how he did it, and what it means. Berners-Lee traces the Web to a ``play'' program he invented in 1980, while a consultant at the CERN laboratories in Switzerland. ``Enquire,'' named after a Victorian advice book, stored information about the job in a nonhierarchical manner. The program impressed those who saw it, but nobody used it, and the disk containing it was eventually lost. But Berners-Lee was still interested in using computers to connect ideas. Returning to CERN a few years later, he began re-creating Enquire. One problem was allowing workers to use their preferred software without imposing a complex set of new rules governing access to the Web. Hypertext, which allowed any document to be linked to any other on the system, was the key to solving this problem. Also, by then, the Internet was beginning to come into existence in the US. Its standardized protocols seemed an ideal way to bridge between operating systems. By 1989, he was ready to create the Web. Progress was swift; within a year of its introduction, the number of users was doubling every three to four months. Berners-Lee acted as pitchman, convincing different groups to adopt standards that would increase the accessibility and utility of the Web. At last, CERN released the basic Web code and protocols into the public domain, without licensing feesa step that insured that no hardware or software company would stand in the way of their propagation. Intent on keeping the Web universally accessible, Berners-Lee became head of the MIT-based World Wide Web Consortium, the arbiter of Web standards. In the final chapters of his book, he describes his visions for the Web: as a medium for collaboration, person-to-person and person-to-computer, ultimately restructuring society. Anyone who uses his invention can see how far that process has already come. A compelling combination of techno-history and visionary philosophy. (First serial to Vanity Fair; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Anyone who needs to understand the most fundamental change in society since the Industrial Revolution must read Weaving the Web. It is the definitive book on where the Internet has been and where it is going by the person most responsible for its creation." -- Lew Wilks, President, Internet & Multimedia Markets, Qwest Communications International Inc.
"Tim Berners-Lee forever transformed the global business and computing model with the creation of the World Wide Web." -- PC Week
"WEAVING THE WEB is unique because it was written by Tim Berners-Lee, who created the Web and is now steering it along exciting future directions. No one else can claim that. And no one else can write this--the true story of the Web." -- Michael Dertouzos, Director, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
...Weaving the Web--a dry but important account of how, when, where and why he cooked up the Web--[is] well worth reading. It is a book written by the ultimate good guy. -- The New York Times Book Review, Katie Hafner
Only one individual has the authority and unique perspective to document the creation and evolution of the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee recounts with indisputable clarity and candor how it all really happened: the politics involved in bringing his model to life at the CERN physics lab, the infamous browser wars, the integration of Java technology, the creation of W3C and more. -- Alan Baratz, Ph.D., President, Java Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Tim Berners-Lee is the most qualified person on the planet to chronicle the Web. With the introspection and concern only a parent can truly express, he reaches beyond the common soundbytes of our industry to define how the Web is dramatically impacting the very course of humanity. -- Jeff Papows, President and CEO, Lotus Development Corp.
About the Author
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, is currently the director of theWorld Wide Web Consortium, the coordinating body for Web development, and heoccupies the 3Com Founders chair at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.Recipient of numerous awards, he received the distinguished MacArthurFellowship in 1998. He lives in Cambridge, MA.
