The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Q & A : World Wide Web’s Whiz : Talking Information With Network’s Inventor
Anyone with an interest in cyberspace has by now heard of the World Wide Web, the easy-to-use, graphically oriented computer network that features a powerful system for linking related subjects--and is now the most heavily used part of the global Internet. But surprisingly few have heard of the Web’s inventor, Tim Berners-Lee.
Working at the European Particle Physics Lab, or CERN, near Geneva, Berners-Lee was aiming merely to develop a means of organizing his own projects. In 1980, he wrote a piece of software that acted as a kind of super-calendar and address book and ideas index, all cross-referenced so that he could find things easily.
It worked so well that he thought other people might like to use it too. When he returned to CERN in the mid-1980s, his bosses gave him the go-ahead--though no budget--to keep developing it, and he then began distributing the basic Web software on the Internet. It took a little time to catch on, but over the past year the Web has become the favored cyber medium for everyone from magazine publishers to beer advertisers to television networks.
Its main virtue is its elegant simplicity: Type an address into the Web Browser program on your personal computer to look at the text and pictures and even sounds of a particular Web site, and then click on any word or phrase or icon that’s highlighted for instant access to a related site. These connections are known as “hypertext” links.
Berners-Lee came to the United States in September, 1994, to launch the World Wide Web Consortium, a nonprofit organization based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and dedicated to developing standards, protocols and new software for the rapidly evolving Web. When he’s not on the road, he’s ensconced in his MIT office in front of side-by-side 19-inch computer monitors, scanning information from all over the world, building the Web of the future.
Berners-Lee, unassuming in khaki slacks and cotton shirts, talks fast and cruises the Web even faster. He spoke to The Times at MIT.
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Q: In your own words, define the Web.
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A: People ask what the difference is between the Web and the [Internet]. The Web is the space of all information accessible over networks. The Net is made of cables. When you explore the Net, you find computers. When you explore the Web, you find information.
Now computers are difficult to deal with. Normal people don’t want to know about computers. All the programs for dealing with the Net talk about “connections and computers.” What people want is information. So what the Web does is make the space of information available to you.
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Q: How did you come to invent it?
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A: Basically I was interested in programs which represented data the same way the brain represents data. The sort of thing a human being can do that a machine can’t do is associate two totally random things.
For example, you come into this building and there’s a strong smell of coffee. You do that three times, the next time you smell coffee you’ll think of this building. Computers, which are set up as databases of places and databases of copy, don’t make connections between the two.
I was dabbling with programs like that and wrote myself a program designed to enable me to keep track of what was going on in real life, in particular at CERN. I wrote Enquire, a very simple hypertext program, though I didn’t know the word then. I used it to keep track of what I was doing with people, groups, software, hardware and the relationship between them.
But in 1989, I wanted anybody else in my project to use it, and I wanted all the other projects I might want to know about, in CERN, for example, to be documented this way.
I also wanted a third property. Let’s say you and I keep our recipes in separate databases, and I refer to one of your recipes in one of my mine. I have to take your entire set and combine it into my database. But you can’t ask people to keep merging their databases--to always move data from one sort of computer to another. It’s too difficult. So you need a system in which you can make a link--between a piece of information stored on one sort of computer in one place in the world, to another sort of computer in another part of the world, with only incremental effort.
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Q: Were other people talking about this problem? Or did they not even see it?
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A: I couldn’t persuade anybody to pick it up. I looked at all the products out there, and in some cases tried to persuade people to take one that had possibilities of working like this, and make it work--and they said “No.” . . . Eventually there were two people [at CERN] who helped. Robert Cailliau was enthusiastic and helped promote the idea. And Mike Sendall, my boss, agreed it would be a good idea. “Why not? Let’s do it,” he said, though he had no mandate and no funding for it.
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Q: How did it reach us?
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A: I put the code on the Internet for colleagues, and a few people picked it up and started to use it in ’91.
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Q: You put it out there for free?
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A: Yes. That’s the way the Internet works. But it started very slowly, in ‘89, then ’91. You didn’t hear about the World Wide Web until ’93.
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Q: What is the World Wide Web Consortium that you’ve started here at MIT?
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A: What you have now is interoperability. The consortium is there to ensure this continues while protocols evolve. Things will be more powerful, faster. There have to be standards, and W3C [the Web consortium] is making sure they exist.
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Q: Who can join? Who are the members?
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A: In practice, it’s corporations--networking companies, Web companies, computer manufacturers, content providers, software providers. There are two levels of membership: large and small companies.
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Q: What do the members get? How do they benefit?
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A: They get a seat at the table to ensure what sort of facilities exist. We’re producing specifications and software. They get to work with us, to influence what happens, to see what’s going to be coming out next.
And members get the specs and code one month before the general public. There’s a distinct business advantage. After one month, the general public can get it and use it as they like, for free.
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Q: People say there’s too much on the Net to be able to find things.
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A: There’s a lot of paper out there too! There’s a lot of junk in each medium. In each case, there are ways of finding quality things. It’s an information street. You have to be streetwise. Caveat lector.
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Q: The Web had only 100 sites in 1992 and more than 22,000 at last count. Isn’t that overwhelming for most people?
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A: To be overloaded by the existence of so much on the Web is like being overloaded by the mass of beautiful countryside. You don’t have to visit it, but it’s nice to know it’s there. Especially the variety and freedom.
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Q: There’s a downside to every step forward. Cars were invented to give us freedom of movement, but we also got pollution and traffic jams. What concerns you about the Web’s future?
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A: If the existence of some unsuitable material at some sites causes legal censorship of networked information, that would be a huge step backward for individual freedom. We must institute a civilized means for dealing with these problems, such as voluntary ratings and third-party filtering services.
We have to ensure that the Web exists for people and cannot be exploited by either insurrectionist crooks or tyrannical governments. We have to think as hard about the constitution of cyberspace as about any other constitution.
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Q: What about the Web’s future? What can we expect?
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A: Let’s look out for:
* It being as easy to edit hypertext links as to read them.
* More efficient protocols making browsing over a phone line seem much faster.
* 3D places and video links with other people on the Web.
* On-line services providing you with not only a link, but with a disk space on a server for your public information.
* A lot of on-line shopping.
* The Web being used--by expressing connections, dependencies and relationships--to help us analyze our problems in the future.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Tim Berners-Lee
Invented: World Wide Web; the Virtual Library
Age: 39
Education: Bachelor’s in physics, Oxford University
Family: Married, two children
Credits: Director, coordinator of the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C, started September, 1994, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Has more than 50 major corporate clients.
Preferred computer: “At work, an HP 712/80 running NeXTStep with dual color screens. At home, a 386 notebook. Everywhere, PSION 3a.”
Favorite non-computer reading material: “The Economist and Wired magazines. And books! I love all kinds of books.”
World Wide Web Growth
Since 1993, the number of World Wide Web servers has grown exponentially.
5/93: 100
6/93: 130
12/93: 623
5/94: 1,200
6/94: 1,265
12/94: 11,576
5/95: 22,000
Researched by JENNIFER OLDHAM / Los Angeles Times
Source: Matthew Gray, World Wide Web Wanderer
