Tim Berners-Lee Enters Blogosphere

Saiyine writes "Sir Timothy 'Tim' John Berners-Lee has entered the world of blogging. From his first post: 'In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights ... Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space.'"

Comments

A plague!

[aarku]

Woe onto the editor who posts a story with the word "blogosphere" in the headline.

Re:A plague!

[Fizzl]

With Timothy 'Tim' John Berners-Lee in the body no less!

Re:A plague!

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Woe onto the editor who posts a story with the word "blogosphere" in the headline.

I've never been fond of the word "blog" myself. It sounds to me like something you do when you have a stomach flu...

I for one

[TubeSteak]

I for one, welcome our new Blogging Lord

In related news

[Demona]

Tim Berners-Lee disables blog comments.

Re:In related news

[SpaceLifeForm]

He was prepared. Seems to be holding up well.

Yeah, But....

[CWRUisTakingMyMoney]

Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself? Surely, he couldn't have overlooked the ease of vandalism on the system he envisioned, but a community of scientists is much less likely to vandalize each other's work than the population at large. Wikis are very popular, but so is their vandalism. Heck, Slashdot just did a story about that today with Wikipedia.

Re:Yeah, But....

[Sebilrazen]

Heck, Slashdot just did a story about that today with Wikipedia.



Only 1? Crap, that means the next dupe should be up in 3...2...

Re:Yeah, But....

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself?

The first HTML browser he wrote was called 'WorldWideWeb'. You figure it out.

Surely, he couldn't have overlooked the ease of vandalism on the system he envisioned, but a community of scientists is much less likely to vandalize each other's work than the population at large.

I don't think he envisioned anonymous collaborative editing.

Re:Yeah, But....

[m00nun1t]

You clearly missed the bit in the abstract that said:

"...if one had access rights..."

Re:Yeah, But....

[HD Webdev]

Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself?

He was trying to create that network for almost 10 years before before that time.

Then, not only did he create an excellent way to do it, he published a public site that would be called a BLOG now except it didn't allow for comments to be added by visitors.

Fast forward 15 years and he has a new BLOG except it now has user comment capability.

That's it in a nutshell.

Re:Yeah, But....

[peter303]

>I don't think he envisioned anonymous collaborative editing.

Tim did envision editable-browsers in his early web design. He had that people wouldnt have to create web content by going outside the browser. But he nor the National Center for Supercomputing implement that feature by the time Mosaic popularized the web.

Blog runs Drupal

[Dreadlord]

Interestingly, Tim Berners-Lee uses Drupal to run his blog.

Re:Blog runs Drupal

[tintub]

That isn't interesting at all.

Interestingly, I was about to post the exact same thing.

Re:Blog runs Drupal

[chx1975]

Err what? Drupal was written by Dries Buytaert and much later, DeanSpace was using Drupal. http://drupal.org/node/769 and for eg. http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/view/252

Re:Blog runs Drupal

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Howard Dean's idea and code, though.

Dries Buytaert is a close friend of Karl Rove and executive of Diebold (the company that made the electronic butterfly ballots in Florida that were used to disenfranchise Blacks and Liberals in Florida).

Karl, wanting to sabotage the Dean candidacy, had Dries hack into Howard Dean's server and steal the code and delete it from Dean's computer so that he couldn't release it and take the credit he deserve for his hard and brilliant work.

It is sad how corrupt the Bu$h Administration really is and how sneaky and crooked KKKarl Rove is and has gotten away with so much.

Thus MySpace?

[Eberlin]

At a public library computer lab, the most common use of the machines is people gawking at other people's pictures on myspace. At any given time, this is about 70 percent of the usage.

Though I'm definitely thankful for this wonderful thing that Sir Tim envisioned, there's a part of me that suffers a bit. For every tool created, there are good uses and bad uses, and yeah I know I'm probably not fit to decide which category myspace belongs in...but I bet that what we most commonly use the web for nowadays is not what even Sir Tim had in mind.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[Neoprofin]

Truly the creativity he invisioned has been wasted on finding new and bizarre fetish porn or downloading the new 50 cent album? That's the tragedy of life I guess.

While that may be the case one cannot dispute the postive impact that the WWW has had on exposing people to others viewpoints and giving even the most awkward of fringe views a home to be expressed.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[Malangali]

At a public library computer lab, the most common use of the machines is people gawking at other people's pictures on myspace. At any given time, this is about 70 percent of the usage.

Henry Ford probably never envisioned Hummers driving over curbs to get to the best parking spaces at the mall.

The Wright brothers probably never envisioned people flying massive airplanes into buildings as weapons.

The inventors of the television probably never envisioned "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire."

Thomas Edison, when he invented the phonograph, most certainly did not imagine gangsta rap.

Inventions happen, but what happens when they are released into the wild is not in the hands of the inventor. And really, why should it matter what the inventor was thinking of when s/he first developed the innovation?

Re:Thus MySpace?

[cHiphead]

the universal availability of porn outweighs any of the negatives you allude too.

cheers.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[Eberlin]

The point is that for every innovation presented to the masses, there is a commercialization, and inevitably, a complete bastardization of the original concept. Even you point this out.

It is more a statement against human nature than it is about the vision of one man.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[osu-neko]

Actually, the most telling statement about human nature here is how, when someone uses a new tool in a way someone else doesn't like, it's called "bastardization". That it happens isn't a statement against human nature, but that it's viewed that way by some certainly is...

Re:Thus MySpace?

[mikefe]

Well, all things do not have equal value. Some stuff is just crap, engaged in by the dummies.

And yet, if you had one of those dummies you wouldn't be coming home to Mary and her four sisters.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[TrappedByMyself]

Though I'm definitely thankful for this wonderful thing that Sir Tim envisioned, there's a part of me that suffers a bit. For every tool created, there are good uses and bad uses, and yeah I know I'm probably not fit to decide which category myspace belongs in...but I bet that what we most commonly use the web for nowadays is not what even Sir Tim had in mind.

Now wait a minute. Do you think Sir Tim envisioned a tech news discussion site where the editors are too lazy to check for grammar, spelling, dupes, or even quality of the stories, and a bulk of the users post thoughtless cliché comments just to get free karma?

Re:Thus MySpace?

[gad_zuki!]

>but I bet that what we most commonly use the web for nowadays is not what even Sir Tim had in mind.

So? Linus probably never thought he'd be writing code for missile trajectory systems. Edison would be completely and utterly confused by 21st century life, culture, and technology.

As far as myspace goes, to each his own. At the very least it has a positive social function in the exchange of ideas and networking, albeit for a certain demographic. Just because you aren't a teen anymore doesn't mean that suddenly all teens suck or that things were 'better' before.

If people are concerned about control, legacy, content filtering, etc then they should stay out of the open game. Go proprietary like Compuserv, Prodigy, and to a lesser extent AOL. Technology which decentralizes information like the internet or the printing press leads to many things. Hearing people complain about ordinary blogs, LJ, myspace, etc must have been just like hearing the Catholic church complain about how people are learning to read their own bibles or are publishing criticism of government and the church. Some things never change it seems.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[ScaryFroMan]

As far as myspace goes, to each his own. At the very least it has a positive social function in the exchange of ideas and networking, albeit for a certain demographic. Just because you aren't a teen anymore doesn't mean that suddenly all teens suck or that things were 'better' before.

Well, I'm a student (Read: teenager) at a major metropolitan high school, and myspace is everywhere. I think it is almost entirely stupid. I've looked around on it on occasion, and I sometimes wonder if my peers have complete keyboards, or even eyes. The majority or backgrounds are so garish ad horribly unobserveable that I can't read or stand to look at them. Then, we get to the typing.

I entirely understand the use of greatly shortened words in instant messaging, or text messaging, but when you have plenty of time to type and don't have to write quickly enough that you get interrupted, there is no excuse for not using grammar or spelling.

Now, I'm not an entirely ordinary person, i.e. I read slashdot, play tabletop RPGs on messageboards, am the editor of the paper. But people who by all stanards would be just as intelligent, well-spoken and grammatically correct as myself still write like that. I think it's horrible.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[xTantrum]

a little tidbit about TBL some companies in the news recently could learn from.

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.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[Anonymous Coward]

Philo Farnsworth was once asked on What's My Line if he had invented some kind of a machine that might be painful when used. He answered "yes, sometimes it's most painful," because he had invented the television.

Re:Thus MySpace?

[HD Webdev]

At a public library computer lab, the most common use of the machines is people gawking at other people's pictures on myspace. At any given time, this is about 70 percent of the usage.

No no no. Many of us gawk at our own pictures at myspace.

We're that hot!

Re:Thus MySpace?

[vsync64]

Linus probably never thought he'd be writing code for missile trajectory systems.

I know a guy that does write code for missile trajectory systems. They do use Linux for some of their dev/build machines and rarely for limited unit tests and simulation. That's the limit though and I gathered it's mainly just because gcc and the like are convenient to run there. The missiles and their control systems run a bare-bones commercial real-time OS. Had I expected any commodity OS, the reality is about the maximum of what I would expect.

I for one am glad that missiles don't run Linux as far as I know. I'm glad the developers don't have to wonder if the developers getting bored and ripping out the VMM subsystem, or the scheduler, or the VFS, or whatever, in the midst of a stable release series (oh wait Linux doesn't have those anymore) might cause random guidance or detonation.

For the record I'm typing this from a Linux laptop and it's the least worst for hacking. But it's certainly not applicable to the vast majority of situations that people fantasize it is, at least not in its current state. I run FreeBSD and Solaris in production, when it matters that things are stable.

Re:Editing pages?

[Bogtha]

Why are they hacks? GET is for retrieving a resource from the server, PUT is for putting a resource on the server, and POST is for sending information to a resource on the server. In what way are they not "proper"?

Re:Editing pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this,

"It would browse http: space and news: and ftp: spaces and local file: space, but edit only in file: space"

so i'm guessing editing on the host machine only?

Re:Editing pages?

[mill]

In what way are GET and PUT horrible hacks?

Dave Winer and People's memory

[shareme]

People forget that when Dave Winer started his own scripting.com blog after writing for wired that he cedited the very first blog to Tim Berners-Lee To say eh entered blogs is in fact amiss statement..maybe the term re-=awakening should have been used??

Oh great another blog "news" story geez

[SmallFurryCreature]

What do I care who this "Berners-Lee" guy is anyway. Another useless nobody, why I bet that if I travel back in time and shoot him it will have absolutly no eff

This story is technically incorrect

[pHatidic]

The first ever webpage, Tim's homepage, was a blog.

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, jokes get sick of YOU!

Re:Editing pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this: http://www.webdav.org/.

HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[TeknoHog]

From TFA:

Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor.

I thought the idea of WYSIWYG goes completely against HTML's separation of content from presentation. I can't imagine why TBL would say something like this, perhaps his meaning of WYSIWYG is different from mine?

Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[slavemowgli]

Content is separate from presentation today (or should be), but it wasn't always so - CSS and stuff is a (relatively) new idea. Back in those days, HTML really was different - it wasn't a general mark-up language for document structure, but rather something that "just worked" in a certain way without people thinking about it that much. And documents were simpler, too: you didn't have complicated constructs designed to give a "presentation", but rather a page consisting of things like paragraphs, headlines, bulleted lists and the like, akin to what a page in a book might look like. There was no *need* to separate content from presentation then, simply because there was no real "presentation" to speak of; most tags that existed had a "natural" presentation.

Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[TeknoHog]

One can use a GUI tool to edit the structure of a page and then apply CSS stylesheets..

Yes, but GUI does not imply WYSIWYG. For example XEmacs has a GUI, but WYSIWYG implies a fixed layout of elements.

Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[SandHawk]

Even a bulleted list needs a style. Certainly paragraphs do. Note how many options there are in CSS for controlling the style of each one.

In the original web, the idea was more that such style would be determined by the reader (via the browser), than by the writer/content-creator.

Note that in a Wiki the author has no control over the style -- either there is a site-wide style, or the reader gets to pick a style for all the pages. Same idea for the original web.

Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[SandHawk]

Yes, what Tim means by WYSIWYG (I'm pretty sure) is immersive editing, a direct manipulation interface.

It's WYSIWYG if you think of the document in an abstract sense, separated from all style (or in your own style -- knowing that others will see it in their style).

Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[Bogtha]

Content is separate from presentation today (or should be), but it wasn't always so - CSS and stuff is a (relatively) new idea.

That's not really accurate. It's true that HTML 3.2 included a hell of a lot of presentational markup, but that was because the W3C decided to publish a specification based on what everybody was doing (i.e. browser extensions) rather than what should be done.

If you turn the clock back further, you'll find that older HTML specifications didn't concern themselves with presentation much at all, and were designed to allow varying styles, including stylesheets. For example, read the HTML 2.0 specification, and you'll see that provision is explicitly made for stylesheets. Yes, you can use CSS with an HTML 2 document, even though CSS hadn't been developed by the time HTML 2.0 was published. I quote:

The LINK element is typically used to indicate authorship, related indexes and glossaries, older or more recent versions, document hierarchy, associated resources such as style sheets, etc.

CSS is far from the first stylesheet language, there have been others, such as DSSSL. It's a shame browser vendors didn't implement stylesheets much sooner, but the fault lies with them, not with HTML, as you can see.

There was no *need* to separate content from presentation then

You are only really thinking about "presentation" in terms of the exact styling given to particular element types in a high-res graphical environment. Presentation is a wider topic than that. Separating content from presentation was just as necessary back then - otherwise you'd have content written on a terminal that can fit 100 characters in a row screwing up on terminals that can only fit 80 characters in a row, and so on. Tim Berners-Lee had this to say on the matter, in his book about the origins of the WWW, Weaving the Web:

A philosophical rule was that HTML should convey the structure of a hypertext document, but not details of its presentation.

As far as Tim using the term 'WYSIWYG', I think he's misusing the term as a synonym for 'graphical editor' as many people do, rather than having any deeper meaning.

Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[the argonaut]

I thought the idea of WYSIWYG goes completely against HTML's separation of content from presentation. I can't imagine why TBL would say something like this, perhaps his meaning of WYSIWYG is different from mine?

You totally missed the point; he's not saying that HTML should be edited with a WYSIWYG editor; he's saying that he's surprised that people would be willing to do things the right way, without an editor. Of course, little did he know that most people weren't willing to do so, hence the development of crap like Dreamweaver, GoLive, etc.

Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing?

[angrykeyboarder]

He's doing it himself. He did mention his use of Amaya and Nvu.

So...

[bunnyman]

Dropping the term "blogosphere" for a moment, we can see that the inventor of the World Wide Web has a blog, a "web log" if you will.

So the headline should be:

Inventor of WWW Uses His Own Invention

Re:So...

[thesnarky1]

Wait... I didn't see anything in TFA about Al Gore....

Re:So...

[McFadden]

Don't forget, Berners-Lee merely invented the Web. Gore created the whole goddamn internet.

Re:Editing pages?

[heinousjay]

More properly, there are some horrible hacks out there who misuse HTTP. In particular, anyone who uses the GET method to change server state should have a finger removed.

Browsers, on the other hand, have implemented some horrible hacks in lieu of properly implementing the protocol. That's more along the lines of your complaint.

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

In Korea, only old people get sick of jokes.

you're probably right

[weierstrass]

>The Wright brothers probably never envisioned people flying massive airplanes into buildings as weapons.

But some one asked one of the Wright brothers what aeroplanes would be useful for.

And he said "War."

No I don't have a reference.

Re:you're probably right

[Malangali]

Sure, the Wright Bros. pictured WWI sorts of military applications - aerial recognizance, shooting guns from the cockpit, dropping explosive cannonballs. But planes the size of ocean liners? Supersonic fighter jets? They weren't even dreaming about these sorts of creations while they were in Kitty Hawk risking their lives to prove that heavier-than-air flight was even possible.

Re:Editing pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly right :)

A good example of misuse is those links sent after you register with a site, for you to click on and validate your account.

The idea of GET is that you can prefetch it and it should be cacheable and not change anything on the server. It should be ok for an email client to cache any links without breaking anything.

They should bring up an page with a form with a "validate this account" button that HTTP POSTs and makes a change.

"A PERSONAL NOTEBOOK" --TimBL, 1990

[s388]

Here's Tim's brief list of his envisioned uses of the web, from 1990:

Here are some of the many areas in which hypertext is used. Each area has its specific requirements in the way of features required.

        * General reference data - encyclopaedia, etc.
        * Completely centralized publishing - online help, documentation, tutorial etc
        * More or less centralized dissemination of news which has a limited life
        * Collaborative authoring
        * Collaborative design of something other than the hypertext itself
        * Personal notebook

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Uses.html

The guy isn't an idiot. Apparently you haven't noticed that. He helped devise something that would have myriad uses, essentially limited only by the needs and imaginations of its users.

It's a MEDIUM.

For SHARING INFORMATION. And BEING CREATIVE. With MEANS for MOST ANYBODY to contribute and participate. And despite what you may tend to think, personal and interpersonal details (even on the level of gossip or the ravings of a hyper teenybopper) in fact qualify as information.

Care to explain how people using myspace makes you suffer? Maybe if they were wasting a limited resource like computer stations or bandwidth which you or someone else needed for a more urgent or immediate purpose, but it seems like you're simply ideologically opposed to people doing whatever they want.

Even today the web serves the same purposes that the guy laid out in 1990, just in much more fanciful ways, and more importantly on a web itself that is infinitely richer and wider.

Re:"A PERSONAL NOTEBOOK" --TimBL, 1990

[angrykeyboarder]

If they are using mysapce.com at a library they are wasting resources. A lot of those people standing in line waiting for a computer actually have something important to do (which may include research on the web).

I have no problem with myspace.com per se. But for someone to waste time on it at a library is just "not right".

Re:"A PERSONAL NOTEBOOK" --TimBL, 1990

[timmyf2371]

On the other hand, what is important to you could be entirely different as to what's important to someone else.

I post a great deal on all sorts of forums and discussion boards; some are for pleasure (which is equally as important as anything else) and some are important to share knowledge etc.

Besides, when it comes to a library, if the library is public then those wanting to use it for pleasure or "unimportant" things have paid their taxes to use it just as much as you have. In the case of a school or college, then those using it for pleasure have paid to use it just as much as you have.

Re:"A PERSONAL NOTEBOOK" --TimBL, 1990

[s388]

the poster didn't mention a line, and didn't mention that it was stopping other people from using the lab. anyway in a university setting it would make some amount of sense to give priority to academic and scholastic use.

i agree with the guy next down below, for the record.

Re:"A PERSONAL NOTEBOOK" --TimBL, 1990

[mdwh2]

If they are using mysapce.com at a library they are wasting resources. A lot of those people standing in line waiting for a computer actually have something important to do

Like posting to Slashdot!

Heaven forbid that those time-wasting MySpacers should prevent you from getting First Post...

Most intelligent comment so far, hands down...

[happymedium]

...comes from "kid mercury," and what a gem it is:

"dude, www was a really good idea.

it's like the ultimate idea, man. i mean, i thought i had some good ideas, but www trumps everything. it's up there with like electricity. or music.

thanks for sharing."

Second place, from "Sean":

"You're the man now dog!"

Now, let's mull that one over for a second. When Sir Tim mentioned blogs and wikis as the primary examples of the wonderful user-created content that the Web is now overflowing with, didn't he leave something out? Thank you, Sean, for bringing this to our attention.

not newsworthy

[Flunitrazepam]

Call me when he enters the NEOblogosphere

Re:The real question is

[the argonaut]

Because he's too busy actually accomplishing something?

WTFBBQ

[ToasterofDOOM]

We're not. Aren;t you late for some digg trolls?

Re:Editing pages?

[angrykeyboarder]

NCSA Mosaic ran on Windows 3.1 (with Win32s) (and later on Windows 95), X-Window and Mac. It was the first web browser I ever used (that was in 1994).

By today's standards it's a piece-of-crap, but back then it was quite a marvel.

It was not an editor, just a web browser. It's still around for historical purposes and if you can get it to work, you'll see just how far we've come.

Anything multimedia wise was handled by "helper" applications that would launch when you clicked on the applicable hyperlink.

Nothing was embedded in a web page (at first). HTML was in it's infancy, so web pages with ordinary fonts with no color and pages with plain backgrounds were the norm (till someone figured out how to make an image file into a web page background, that is - then everyone went nuts with it).

This and this are examples of what your typical web site looked like in 1995-1996.

And who can forget the famous and long-defunct "Trojan Room Coffee Machine"?

Blogosphere

[tero]

Anyone using the word "Blogosphere" should be executed publicly.

Now that's what I call *dogfood*

[Forget4it]

Tim Berners-Lee now using the read/write Web: Now that's what I call *dogfood*.

Re:OMG

[zo1dberg]

Wouldn't that be GNU/Jokes?

Re:Editing pages?

[Kroc]

Or network...

If I'd invented the web I'd dine out on it more.

[sharopolis]

I don't think I'd be able to stop telling people what I'd done if I'd played such a major part in the development of the web as good old TBL.
You have a website? lovely, I invented those you know!
You're an internet millionaire? Fantastic! You'd be a nobody if it wasn't for me!
Dear amazon.com, send me free stuff. I invented the web.
I don't think I'd ever get tired of that.

Re:Berners-Lee stars in the upcoming film:

[gamblog]

To be filmed on campus at the leafy Oxford Uni. Rumour from the suburbs has it that Timbl tumbled from the thimble of tumbleweed, but did not inhale.

Re:Editing pages?

[Sketch]

> Was that browser/editor Mosaic?

No, it was WorldWideWeb aka "WWW", and unless you had a NeXT box, you probably have not used it. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb