Weaving the Web

Here's yet another history of the Web, this time by it's creator; that is, the person who figured out how to connect documents and files in different computers to one another. Tim Berners-Lee actually did this, using HTML and HTTP, coining the name "World Wide Web," as well. In lecture style he recounts the chronology of these events and other players in the field. The book and his narration provide a forum to discuss his philosophy of open access, self-policing and other sensitive issues such as censorship, privacy and the influence of software and hardware companies on the Web and the Internet. Passionately presented, WEAVING THE WEB is an insider's look at one of the most influential phenomena in today's society. M.B.K. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

January 4, 1999
This lucid but impersonal memoir conveys some vital history and intriguing philosophy concerning the Internet, written by the man who invented such ubiquitous terms as URL, HTML and World Wide Web. British-born physicist Berners-Lee is now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which is based at MIT and sets software standards for the Web. In the late 1980s, he wrote the first programs that set up the Web, thus revolutionizing the Internet by allowing users to hyperlink among the world's computers. It was a quantum conceptual leap, and not everyone instantly understood it (some researchers had to be convinced that posting information was better than writing custom programs to transfer it). The release of graphical browsers such as Netscape Navigator made the Web much easier for home users to navigate and led to the commercialization of the Net. Although Berners-Lee calmly eschewed opportunities to get rich, he doesn't subscribe to the notion, common among pre-Web denizens of the Internet, that commercialization is a pox upon cyberspace. After short takes on current issues like privacy and pornography, Berners-Lee moves into prediction and prescription: the Web needs more intuitive interfaces and integration of tools, "annotation servers" that allow comments to be posted on documents and "social machines" that enable national plebiscites. And while he's no digital utopian, he thinks an Internet that balances decentralization and centralization can contribute to a more harmonious society. Berners-Lee's tone is more lofty than quotidian. He'd rather muse about the benefits of decentralization that his revolutionary technology makes possible than respond to Internet skeptics and critics. But he was very, very right a decade ago, and he's well worth reading now. First serial to Vanity Fair; 7-city author tour; 25-city radio campaign.