On March 1989, a man wrote a proposal for a universal linked information system that became the World Wide Web.
The man is none other than Tim Berners-Lee. From the image above, he is shown at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) with the NeXT computer that he used to invent the World Wide Web.
However, his initial proposal was dismissed by his boss for being "vague but exciting". Even so, his boss gave him another chance to work on it and by October 1990, Tim Berners-Lee had written the three fundamental technologies that remain the foundation of today's Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) which is commonly known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Not only that, Berners-Lee also wrote the first Web page browser called the 'WorldWideWeb.app' and the first Web server called 'httpd'. The first Web page was presented on the open internet as 1990 came to a close.
Despite being the creator of the World Wide Web, he owed the success of the Web to CERN and the fact that the technology was not proprietary. On April 1993, CERN agreed to make the underlying code available on a royalty-free basis forever which was sparked an unprecedented global wave of creativity, collaboration and innovation. In other words, if the Web had been patented, popular websites today like Google, YouTube and Facebook would not exist.
In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) when he moved from CERN to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. W3C is known as international community dedicated to developing open Web standard. He is still holding the position of Director of W3C to this day.
So what does Tim Berners-Lee have in plan for the future of the Web?
Well, during his greeting for the Web's 25th anniversary, Berners-Lee asserted that there is still much work to be done in order for everyone to have access to the Web.
In the video above, Berners-Lee reminisced on how the World Wide Web started and progressed and shared his thoughts on what the future would hold for future data. To summarize, Berners-Lee talked about making data more open and accessible to everyone, especially government data because it would make running the town/city/country much easier. I think what he means is that...using Singapore government as an example, by sharing details about say Pioneer Generation in a pdf file, we all can benefit from it as we know much more about it. It's much more effective that only limiting those details within a one-time only talk in community centres. By sharing, we all can be on the same page and be more knowledgeable as a result.
From the research I have gathered about Mr. Tim Berners-Lee, I've found him to be a really kind and humble man who still sees the Web as a work in progress and that there is still much more to be done as I have mentioned earlier. Also, he provided free Wi-Fi for those who attended the 25th anniversary talk! He's definitely cool and kind!
Really, if I get to meet him in person, I would give him a double thumbs-up and thank him profusely for making the Web open for everyone. All thanks to him, not only do we get use many kinds of social networking sites and play online games, we are also able to access peer-reviewed journal articles in a free public database and visit a lot of websites like Nando's and Saprino's to check the menu online.
So thank you, Tim Berners-Lee! Bless you, really.
Hopefully, this post is able to add on to your knowledge about week 1's topic!
See you all next post!
