LONDON -- World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has disclosed that he crafted his creation on a NeXT workstation--and he demonstrated an affection for Apple as well.
The technologist presented a lecture at the Royal Society here on Monday using Apple's OS X Web browser Safari on a PowerBook, and referencing the Web's potential through the possibilities of ICal, Apple's calendar program.
The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, and has been at the forefront of inquiry and discovery since its foundation in 1660.
Proud Parent
Berners-Lee discussed one of the Web's many futures, in what he calls the Semantic Web, another of his inventions. He says it is designed to enhance the supply and exchange of information and data for the benefit of the Web user.
The vision behind the Semantic Web can be described as a mesh of information linked up in such a way as to be easily processed by machines on a global scale, a type of globally linked database. This gradual enhancement would occur as Web applications develop and incorporate this new language, changing the very mechanisms of the Internet.
Berners-Lee calls it "potentially as revolutionary as the original introduction of the World Wide Web itself."
He also described his pleasure at the Web's development.
"The most wonderful thing about creating the Web is the diversity of people involved in creating it, the fact that it is open and royalty-free. There was--and is--a sense of excitement and unbounded opportunity," he said.
"There are challenges ahead, such as the fact that many people think the Web is done," Berners-Lee added. "It might also become too baroque for a decent foundation, with too many bells and whistles now threatening its future. And then there's the possibility that it will be ambushed by patents."
"But things just as big and useful as Google will crop up in the next few years," he promised.
Asked if he had any regrets about his pioneering work on the Web, Berners-Lee replied curtly: "Yes. Slash slash..."
Web History
Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1990 while working at CERN, the European laboratory for Particle Physics. He designed the universal resource locator, or URL, which gives each Web page a unique address, as well as HTML, the basic language that allowed Web pages to be created.
He wrote the first World Wide Web server, "httpd," and the first hypertext browser, "WorldWideWeb," for use at CERN in late 1990; they were made available over the Internet in the summer of 1991. The first Web browser worked only on the NeXT operating system, he told the audience. NeXTStep later became the basis for Mac OS X when Apple bought NeXT, which was also founded by Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.
Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium at the Laboratory for Computer Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 to coordinate and lead the Web's technical evolution and to ensure its continuing universal operability. An important part of this work is reviewing new Web technology developments to ensure that no national, linguistic, or cultural bias has crept into the designs.
Ongoing Issues
The tension between open access to all information and the privacy of personal information remains an ethical issue for the Web. But Berners-Lee remains pleased and hopeful about the potential of the technology.
"Its development is a great example of a human endeavor in which many people participated, driven by individual excitement and a common vision," Berners-Lee said. "There was no plan--it happened because a diverse group of people, connected by the Internet, wanted it to happen."
"From the fact that it did work I draw great hope for all our future," he added. "We now have the ability to communicate and build a society in which mutual respect, understanding and peace between peoples and nations can occur at all levels by finding a balance between the diversity and commonality in our rich world."
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