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Berners-Lee Claims Web "Still In Infancy"
eldavojohn writes "The man credited with inventing the Web at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee, has made a statement on the 15th anniversary of the Web's initial code release that the Web is still in its infancy. He also made a pretty insightful comment about CERN's releasing of the code for the Web into public domain: 'If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now. We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened the world.'"
I started using the Web in 1992 and it was demonstrated in public then. And in any case the Internet is more like 30 years.
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Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
A bit like most 15-year-olds then...still in their infancy.
First, he didn't invent the Internet (capital 'i' please), he is credited with inventing the World Wide Web. Repeat after me: The World Wide Web is NOT the Internet.
Also, I think the web has clearly passed the infant stage and is deeply entrenched in the awkward adolescent phase: It has been doing a lot of experimenting lately with new looks and new technologies. Sure, it thinks it looks really cool and edgy with all of its new Web 2.0 gear (probably bought it from Hot Topic) and it probably feels real good smoking all that XML, but in the end it just ends up being slower, less reliable, and just looks foolish most of the time.
Don't worry, the government cant resist much longer in taxing the golden goose.
That and continuing on their pat of regulating it out of existence. ( if most all content is banned, what value will there be for the network )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Not the internet. In spite of what iPhone commercials claim, they are not equivalent.
... that's like 105 human years. I mean it's 7 internet years to one human year right?
[signature]
March 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee handed his boss a short document entitled Information Management: a Proposal, is one.
Christmas of the following year, when the Web was up and running on two computers, is another.
But perhaps the most important Web anniversary of all is 30 April 1993.
That's the day that Cern put the web in the public domain, thereby ensuring that the world would have a single system for accessing the Internet, instead of a Microsoft Web, a Macintosh Web and who knows, perhaps even an Amstrad Web.
Today, it is hard to imagine a world without the web, yet well into the 1990s, internet access was the reserve of the privileged few, mainly academics.
Although the internet had been around since the 1970s, accessing documents on remote computers required the mastery of complex protocols. Scientists had been doing that for years, and at Cern, the European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, they were particularly adept. So, it's the 15th anniversary today of when CERN handed over the code to the public domain (thank god they did!).
My work here is dung.
"but we would not have flattened the world" What?! I didn't expect a guy from The Flat Earth Society in a leading position at CERN, of all places. How quaint the world has become, in a Matrix-like fashion.
Tim Berners-Lee? Never heard of him. Everyone knows that Algore invented the Internet.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
......but we would not have flattened the world. I can tell you this, I remember when Reagan was shot. I remember teacher strikes in the 70's. I remember Kent State. I remember the first time I every saw Moasaic.Too old for GenX, tool old for babyboomer. I can tell you this: I never thought the wall would fall and I never thought I'd read Russian websites/bloggs like they were around the corner or in the next town. The Internet, more specifically the WWW *HAS* flattened the world in that respect. Imagine what "Reporters Without Borders" would be without it? It is hard now for people to imagine the world without it.
Mr Lee should continue to receive high recognition for what he and CERN have given us.
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He also invented the PC and wrote the first modern OS. (insert emoticon here)
Shocking, I know, but the Slashdot summary is somewhat inaccurate on this point.
It isn't the 15th anniversary of the Internet, obviously. Nor is it the 15th anniversary of the Web, though that's closer. It's the 15th anniversary of the day when CERN put their code for the first web server and browser into the public domain.
We're still a couple months short of the day I first heard of it, which I assume all will agree is the really significant milestone.
The web is a tool; a tool to get false or misleading information more quickly, and to order crap to satisfy compulsive purchasing drives more easily.
It hasn't "flattened" the world - the rich are still getting richer, the poor still live in squalor; good students still use traditional journals to research, mediocre students crib off their peers (whether that's by copying chunks from the guy across the dorm or the undergrad who wrote a Wikipedia entry, the result is the same); wars are still being waged; freedoms are being withdrawn with full force from citizens in Western nations; heavy industry and big pharma is more "closed source" than ever, with everything privatised under the Sun, and the Internet has done little to open up either field.
TBL's right in one thing: the web is still in its infancy. I've been on the 'net since 1994, aged 13, but I still get almost all worthwhile information from print resources or electronic versions of print resources (few of which are published in HTML). Since the art of writing good documentation has been replaced by the assumption of availability of peer support, problems that could be solved by use of the revolutionary "index" now take hours while I wait for a good Usenet / forum response, so in many ways my progress has become slower.
The Web is a good time waster, though. Like TV, only I get to be part of the programme-making.
Nation Information Infrastructure (information superhway) bill passed in Dec 1991. It bought some optical fiber backbones, encouraged adoption of standards. In the 1980s the "net" was rag-tag collection of suibnets- arpatnet, milnet, NSFnet, BITnet, dialup bboards- etc.
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The Web, topless.
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Shouldn't the summary read, "inventing the web?"
--Sam
Where was the printing press 15 years after its invention?
Where was the telephone fifteen years after its invention? (Hint: not in many homes)
Where was the television fifteen years after its invention? It was Commercially available since the late 1930s but when I was a kid in the 1950s there were only three stations in the St Louis metro area, one of the US's larger cities.
The internet is barely out of the womb,
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Get the pr0n off the web! The web is under 18 and all you blokes looking at nudie pictures on it are looking at under-age porn!
After all, we're in the terrible 2.0's right now.
Someone change the diaper, there's twitter all over the place.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
Ah! The www is 15, that would explain all the porn, shallowness, obsessive shouting, stupidity and in-jokes? But, maybe more fun than what we've got to look forward to... { I'm 35 tomorrow, so this is indeed bitterness }
Q: Do you wish you'd started the Web as a business?
A: If I'd started "Web Inc." it would have been just another proprietary system. You wouldn't have had this universality. For something like the Web to exist, it has to be based on public, nonproprietary standards.
— Tim Berners-Lee, Wired, 1997
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
How does Vannevar Bush feel about it?
Just because it's the one YOU use, doesn't make it a proper noun.
they're kind of like the walking dead. souls all blackened, bodies 'running' on greed/fear/ego. see you on the other side of it? let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable. some of US should consider ourselves somewhat fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc.... as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis. concern about the
If he is so fucken smart, why isn't he rich? What a fucken cunt.
He is such a cunt
E-mail, a mature technology, is now 90% spam. The Web isn't quite there yet. Another five years, and we'll be there.
(Thought for today: does the infrastructure required to deliver e-mail spam and Internet ads use more energy than the paper-based direct mail industry?)
I also truly believe that there is a lot more to come, and the massive switch of the desktop to the web is only beginning. CC.
Minutetraders | Voice Exchange Marketplace - Buy/Sell
He invented the World Wide Web.
Everyone KNOWS Al Gore invented the Internet! Sheesh!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Listen up boys and girls. . . I too remember the bad old days before the Information Revolution. The first facsimile machine I used required a single page being mounted on a drum, a phone dialed (with a real rotary dial!), a person on the other end to pick up (in my case I was calling from Olympia, WA to NY, NY), and both parties to place their handsets on their respective machines before hitting the start button. . . The WWW has changed the world and is destroying one of the greatest barriers to over-all well-being of mankind - the ability to share information any time with any one. With the exception of the few remaining totalitarian regimes, government can no longer change and shape information as a form of control. But I think the days of hold-back dictatorships like North Korea and Cuba are numbered and the numbers are dwindling. Because at the end of the day all anyone wants is the freedom to pursue their natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What?
Sharing can only increase the well being of everyone.
34
Because that's what that globe icon on my Windows 95 desktop says!
Still, whether something is free or not doesn't really have an obvious relationship to it spreading (meaningfully) worldwide. For example, I don't think you can say just because something is a proprietary product means it won't spread worldwide. The market is fickle and you never really know what people latch onto. I suspect Gopher failed largely because it just wasn't that great to begin with. But rolling the Gopher:web::UM:CERN analogy to the next level, I have a hunch that if CERN didn't make their web code free, someone else would have created something to compete with it which was free and basically equivalent to it.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I don't think the internet is still in its infancy. Judging by spelling and grammar found in message board posts, blogs, and myspace accounts (ie: "Teh w3b Rulz!!!11"), I would have guessed it is around age of a first grader.
Well, when the internet was 15 years old, which was, what, mid 80s, I don't think the web had even been concieved yet. As for the web, I have been using it for 16 years.
I guess the grandparent forgot the ";)"
Internet is about to leave it's child stage and enter its rebellious teens. Soon it will be locked in its room playing GTA and Guitar Hero; and it always smells of incense.
The Long Now Foundation
The WWW was invented by Tim Berners Lee.
The Internet was invented by Al Gore.
OK kids, you can now get back from recess with something to impress your teachers.
for a bunch of people to wave their' I've been using the internet for x years' penis around.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
i can send an email to a friend in Oregon, and she'll get it in a matter of seconds, if not quicker.
a standard first class letter would take about 4 or 5 days (UPS ground takes 8 days)
the infrastructure behind electronic mail has been in place for decades, and (hopefully) gets updated periodically, but it serves other purposes as well.
it is not dedicated just to the sending of electronic mail, unlike the post office whose only purpose is handling mail. (ok, they process the occasional passport request)
the email infrastructure probably uses more energy, but it is more efficient in terms of speed and volume. it would take MUCH more energy to send a "snail mail" to Oregon from Massachusetts in the same few seconds it takes an email to get there.
The web exists, but the implants aren't here yet.
I'm making a joke, and I'm serious: once it's a direct neural access thing, this stuff will look like Victrolas and Stanley Steamers---both excellent technologies, but now they look quaint and limited.
It won't be easy, but the desires of the military and the handicapped community will make it happen sooner rather than later, even if the initial profit motive should not prove there.
What's text-messaging compared with something more like telepathy?
And even that is a stretch. The "web" he invented at CERN had all of the content sitting on a single server. More like today's Wiki-sites, than WWW. If anybody, it is the creators of Mosaic (at NCSA), who really did it.
The only people I see pushing this myth about Tim's role being fundamental (rather than "merely" substantial), are those anxious about US' just claim to have created the Internet (and WWW) and given it to the world. Although Tim lives in the US now, he is of British origin, which, somehow, gives comfort to those possessed by anti-American sentiment — at least, they don't owe us anything ;-)
Imagine a fatwa banning would-be terrorists from using Internet to communicate, organize, and post their videos, because it is an American invention...
The observed confusion between "web" (for which Tim does deserve plenty if not 100% of the credit) and "the Internet" (for which he neither claims nor deserves any) may very well have been deliberate... In a few more years, the few people, who know the difference will get tired of pointing it out...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I claim Web 'much closer to puberty.'
"...objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences, subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny." -Gould
http://www.slayersaves.com/tour-dates.php
Take a look-- it should blow your mind..
look at 2007....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Or does anyone seriously think the more 'mature' the Internet gets, equaling the more commercially exploited, the less infantile it would become?
Unlike the Web which started out rather clunky, the Gutenburg starting printing at a very high level. Gutenburg spent decades perfecting his machine in secrecy.
You youngsters can't think before WWW, but WWW is but a small and insignificant part of this thing we old timers in the know call the internet. Pick up a book, but make sure it wasn't written by YEY ANOTHER NOOBIE!!, noobie.
All the "I've been using X for Y years!" comments remind me of a poll my local newspaper did back in 1994 when the Web and Internet were just becoming popular with the masses.
Over 40% of the respondents (out of over 900 in one city) said they had been using the Internet for 11 years or more. In 1994.
Um...yeah.
Al Gore never said he invented the internet. Al Gore invented the algorithm, and you can plainly see it derives its name from its inventor.
What the fuck would he know anyway? Cunt.
Exactly, Tim Berners-Lee is famous for his carnal knowledge of the ladies.
Wait, is that not what you meant?
It's more like the web is in its terrible twos.0!
No!
That day IS now!
Well... it was, yesterday.
TBL spawned the web right - I use spawned because invented seems odd, and created is not strictly true - which is the most important invention of the 20th century (or at least way up there).
So why does his office look like a cupboard?!
He should have huge sprawling office with a desk the size of a football field with naked women everywhere, and six roaring fireplaces and a porsche to get around the place and a cocaine mountain and...
Wow... he must be humbler than me.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
The web may be in its infancy, but I don't see any big changes coming along. I mean, I don't see how the web can be improved so much that it will be radically different from now and transform our lives in another way. Basically, the WWW is a medium where text flows from one place to another, no matter what technologies are used to deliver that text (http, xml, etc). Since text is the primary medium of transporting information (since the dawn of civilization), I don't see it being replaced with anything else. It may become more dynamic, but it's still text.