006251587X Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web Book Tim Berners-Lee 07 November, 2000 Collins http://images.amazon.com/images/P/006251587X.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg http://images.amazon.com/images/P/006251587X.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg http://images.amazon.com/images/P/006251587X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg $15.00 $10.20 $4.99 $15.00 $4.59 85763 R31TZQHCU25UF1 RTUAFOEZ6IN9A SA9L9XSLRK5X Internet - World Wide Web General Computer Books: Web Programming Computers Computer - Internet World Wide Web History E-Commerce - General Business & Economics / General Computer Bks - Internet Berners-Lee, Tim Paperback 1 006251587X Usually ships in 24 hours 4.0 48 5

Thoughts on the web from the man who invented it.

In a recent presidential election, Democrat Al Gore was ridiculed for "claiming" that he invented the Internet. While he was a significant player in the development of the Internet, no one can really claim to have invented it and there is a great deal of dispute over whether Gore ever really made the claim. The situation is quite different for the World Wide Web (WWW). Tim Berners-Lee did invent the WWW and there is no dispute about it. It was his vision of writing hyperlinked documents that began a revolution in human information storage and processing. This book is less a historical recounting of the events that led to the invention of the web and more about his thoughts when creating it and where it will go. Berners-Lee is quite correct when he is adamant about the lack of control and standards being a precondition for the development of the web. While others were lobbying for the more rigid format of SGML, he kept to the simpler tag structure of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). The simplicity of HTML made it possible for most people to learn how to write web pages and this helped fuel the explosive growth. In the last part of the book, he discusses what he thinks the web should be become, describing what he calls "the semantic web." This is a web that understands the non-obvious links between different topics. In other words, the web understands the meaning of the data. For example, if you are interested in statistics on breast cancer a search will return data that is truly about breast cancer and not be blocked by a filter because it contains the word "breast." This is a difficult task, although a great deal of progress has been made. A short time ago, most searches using common keywords returned a large number of inappropriate sites because the search engine could be fooled. The situation is much better now, although it is still difficult to determine the quality of the sites returned. Tim Berners-Lee will probably always be considered the person that could have most profited from the Internet yet chose not to do so. For those reasons, he should be a hero to us all. For, if he had decided to patent his invention and charge even the smallest amount as a licensing fee, he would now be rich enough to buy his own country. He explains that in this book as well. 2

The web has never been so boring...

Yes, the book is important because of the role that Tim played in creating the web. It has scattered pieces of trivia and background information that I enjoy digging up from these techno-biographies. But let's be honest: this book is a real snooze-fest. It is only engaging in the mildest sense of the term. One must concentrate hard to keep the mind from wandering. There is no color to it. 4

Insightful but ends in obscurity

This is a must-read for any postmodern Web developer. Helps keeps your eyes from succumbing to tunnel vision ideas like web 2.0. TimBL tells his story and provides a great explanation of his intention for what the Web really is. Points out that really the Web is only half done, and should spawn some really great killer app ideas for any smart developer. The latter half of the book seems filled with Tim's unclear ideas for the future, which are unclear because he doesn't know. Getting too old to see any further perhaps? Such is the fate of all visionaries. If you're a developer, read this book. It's a quick one. 0684832674 0887309895 014200135X 0141000511 0425171698