Web's Just Warming Up, Says The Real Al Gore
Sorry about that tired old joke about who invented the Internet. Of course Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, he invented weather. But if any one person can be said to have "invented the web," it's Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Today's the fifteenth anniversary of the date when the code that makes our beloved series of tubes work was first uploaded to the public domain at Cern, the European research facility located in France. Sir Tim says the present Internet is a wonderful thing, and its future's so bright, we gotta wear shades.
"The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience," he said.
"The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues."
Sir Tim predicted that the web's ability to engender collaboration could one day see the web being used to help manage the planet.
"What's exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance.
"My hope is that those will produce... new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet."
Well, I could do without gathering lots of information about everybody and using it to "help manage the planet," as this approach has already been tried by the East German Stasi way back when. But Berners-Lee and his colleague Robert Caillau deserve an enormous round of applause today. They convinced Cern to give the web away. Imagine if they didn't. I for one, wouldn't like the web half so much if it was just a sort of giant AOL.com.
"The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience," he said.
"The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues."
Sir Tim predicted that the web's ability to engender collaboration could one day see the web being used to help manage the planet.
"What's exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance.
"My hope is that those will produce... new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet."
Well, I could do without gathering lots of information about everybody and using it to "help manage the planet," as this approach has already been tried by the East German Stasi way back when. But Berners-Lee and his colleague Robert Caillau deserve an enormous round of applause today. They convinced Cern to give the web away. Imagine if they didn't. I for one, wouldn't like the web half so much if it was just a sort of giant AOL.com.
