false 821987 1 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.<p> 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 <I>moi</I> 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."<p> 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. <I>--Tim Appelo</I> 807808 1999 Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web total:34|5:6|4:12|3:11|2:3|1:2| 34 119 64 9 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 30 07:09:43 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 30 07:15:23 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jan 22 06:06:05 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 22 06:06:24 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Tue Sep 02 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 26 12:09:12 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 02 06:32:43 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jun 29 19:32:44 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 04 12:47:28 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Mon Feb 11 13:33:33 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 25 14:41:33 -0800 2008 1 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Aug 12 13:46:50 -0700 2007 Thu Jan 03 10:48:18 -0800 2008 Scientific American. Oh well.]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2000 Mon Aug 13 09:47:40 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 13 09:54:29 -0700 2007 2 0 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Fri Apr 04 07:02:59 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 04 07:04:27 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Fri Jun 26 10:50:32 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 10:50:46 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Nov 04 07:47:58 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 04 07:47:58 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Oct 06 14:42:59 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 14:42:59 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sun Aug 30 17:51:17 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 30 17:51:17 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Jul 26 17:35:48 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 26 17:35:48 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Jun 27 10:53:41 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 27 10:53:48 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jun 26 16:39:27 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 16:39:27 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jun 26 10:10:59 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 10:11:08 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Fri Jun 26 10:07:19 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 10:07:53 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jun 26 09:48:15 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 09:48:15 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Jun 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 11 03:28:21 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 11 03:28:35 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon May 25 17:31:55 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 17:31:55 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=821987