Rating:  - Without a doubt, the best explanation of the Web.
The Internet is a communications network, created in 1969, connecting computers to other computers all around the globe. The World Wide Web, on the other hand, is nothing but a set of protocols for allowing computer users to share information on that network. It was invented and launched in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, who practically single-handedly imagined it, developed it, and promoted it, all to foster the free interchange of information over a network connecting previously incompatible computers and hardware. As obvious as it seems in hindsight, it was only through considerable perseverance that the system came into being at all.
For the people who advocate a truly open information system, Berners-Lee is a modern hero. While Marc Andreessen and James Clark jumped into the web business and made a fortune with Netscape Navigator, and while Bill Gates made another fortune by leapfrogging Netscape into the web browser business, Tim Berners-Lee stands pretty much alone in his unselfish devotion to the principle rather than the almighty dollar.
Weaving the Web is Berners-Lee's personal account of the World Wide Web. It is, without a doubt, the best explanation of what the Web is and how it came to be. With the help of Mark Fischetti, it is written in a straightforward style that can be understood even by people who have no technical knowledge of computers. It is also an inspiration for anyone who has ever imagined that ideas alone can change the world. If you want to read a vision of the future, and how one man's vision has changed the present, would you trust someone like Bill Gates, or would you trust someone like Tim Berners-Lee? My vote is for Berners-Lee.
-Edward Samuels, author of The Illustrated Story of Copyright
Rating: - A peek into the mind behind the Web
When I first ventured out onto the Web in 1994, little did I know that just a few years later I'd have the opportunity to meet and work with the man who's ideas put this new virtual world into motion. But there I was, at a W3C Advisory Committee meeting in San Jose, CA (Jan. 1998), sitting elbow to elbow with Berners-Lee at lunch, very much star-struck.
Today, nearly three years later, I've had the pleasure to know a little bit more about Tim Berners-Lee the man, and to see him in action at various W3C meetings and conferences. Reserved, self-effacing, and even shy, you're still able to look into his eyes and see the gears turning exponentially faster than the ideas can possibly come out of his mouth, though he does try -- often being reminded to slow down so that his comments can be digested by the rest of us. Though we disagree occasionally (primarily about the universal application and suitability of namespaces), I very much respect his guidance and vision.
Reading Weaving the Web was enlightening in several aspects: it filled in the holes in my knowledge obtained by talking with Tim, reading other historical works, and speaking with those who also helped make the Web what it is today. The most valuable aspect is the realization that if one truly believes in something and perseveres in their that a good idea can become more than that, it can become something that changes the lives of us all.
Rating:  - too long, too detailed
This book gives a very detailed account of the uphill battle the author had to fight in his invention. While this could be interesting to a student of organizational management, it's kind of boring for the average reader. The book could accomplish its goal in half the length.
Rating:  - A story of a stunning achievement
This is a fascinating book on several levels. It is first a great social history of improbable invention. Take an English computer specialist working at CERN (the European Nuclear Research Consortium in Switzerland) who comes up with an idea for a worldwide system of easy communications that merely means he has to invent the concept of the URI and URL system of universal identifiers on a web of interconnected computers so that users can find specific sites. Then create a single protocol for www that everyone on the planet will get used to including http as a protocol for transferring information across a variety of systems, and do all of this on a voluntary basis subsidized by a nuclear research facility that was focused on vastly different questions.
This is the story of that stunning achievement but would be worth reading for only its own insights into technology and how societies evolve and how a determined creative and patient individual can impact on that evolution. However, this book is much more. It is second an introduction to a way of thinking about the web as a truly interactive system that allows people on a worldwide basis to work together. Berners-Lee notes that his vision of the web is not merely passive reading and passive accessing but the creation of a truly universal ability for people to work together and create a mutually better and more productive society by bringing people together as individuals on a worldwide basis. I found myself thinking much more about truly interactive participatory ideas with the web and how would you manage that level of creativity and group participation. This is a very worthwhile and easy to read story.
Rating: - Could there be a better history of the web
I have heard so many stories of the beginnings of the web, but for the first time, here is how it really happened. Tim Berners-Lee, the man who developed the 'World Wide Web' now tells the tale of how all this hypertext-hoopla began.
Berners-Lee writes in plain english, allowing non-programmers to share in his vision and goals for a universal (or should that be uniform?) way to share information across the internet. Especially interesting is the history of the browser market itself, without all the 'browser-war' hype.
Best of all, this book does not read like a technical specification -- but is full of warmth and humor as we see Berners-Lee bring his brainchild to light.
I read "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: the Origins of the Internet" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, and desperately wished someone would do similar justice to the history of the web. Not only has someone now done just that, but that someone happens to be the inventor of the web! What more could you ask for?
|
