Rating:  - Open, amusing, insightful
What's nice about Weaving the Web is that Tim Berners-Lee quite openly discusses how parallel thinking by other individuals led to some of his developments and how his attitude towards more openness and decentralization was met with incomprehension by all concerned. His thinking was of the rising tide floats all boats school, while his intellectual competitors (he never sold anything) were of the heterogeneity floats our boat school.
The book may be long on paeans to the others involved, but it's nice to know how ideas flowed from person to person, and how comprehensive his initial notions were. What's clear is that his relentless "elling"of the idea of interconnectivity, common language, and open standards is what made the Web spread like wildfire and gave the basis to today's usage.
If Berners-Lee's "ompetitors"had had there way, we'd be using one of a dozen proprietary systems, paying per click and retrieval - very much like a larger version of Lexis-Nexis or CompuServe.
Rating: - A must read for those wanting to play in cyberspace
Weaving The Web is a wonderful blending of three distinct subjects: the history of the World Wide Web, an astute analysis of the web's "current" state, that is, where it stands in the middle of 1999, and where it's founder believes and thinks it is headed. It is difficult to believe the accuracy of Berners-Lee's vision of what the web could be in the time that the web was just a dream, and how he worked to achieve it. He also dispels the common belief that he either disdains the accumulation of wealth that could have been his had he chosen a different path, or that he envies those individuals who have made millions (or billions) by building on the web's humble beginnings. He also does not begrudge the commercialization over the web, as many academics did at the time when the web was viewed primarily as a medium for the free sharing of ideas and information.
Berners-Lee talks in depth about the social implications of technology, and indeed the World Wide Web is a social beast as much as it is a technological one. He does separate, however, the duties of bodies like the W3C whose sole purpose is to facilitate and strengthen the standards and protocols that are providing new richness and robustness to the web. This is clearly highlighted in his discussion of PICS, which allows for creation of rules that can facilitate filtering of objectionable material on the web. Berners-Lee makes the clear distinction between those who create the PICS technology, and those who decide how it will be implemented.
It is evident from this book that Berners-Lee is far from finished in his duties. While not as radical as the initial concept of the World-Wide Web must have been in its time, his discussion of security, privacy, and collaboration and how they can and should be implemented on the web should be read by anyone who wants to be a player in Cyberspace. Berners-Lee does not hold a monopoly on great ideas for the web, but he clearly has a grasp on the balance and understanding of both the technology as well as its place in society that others would be well served to strive for.
Rating:  - Such a nice guy
"Weaving the Web" gives the overwhelming impression that Tim Berners-Lee is basically a Regular Guy who was in exactly the right place at the right time. He comes across as a relentlessly enlightened person, beneficent toward all, earnest to the point of humorlessness.
The book tells the story of the past and present of the Web, and Berners-Lee's ideas about the future, at a very high level. It's not a Techie's History of the Web; there are a few annoying technical gaffes, and not much about the bits and bytes. I was surprised to read some non-technical reviewers opine that it was *too* technical. No pleasing everyone, I guess!
I'm not convinced by Berners-Lee's idea that, if only we hook everything together well enough, we will then be able to make computers that understand, that reason, that figure stuff out for us. I think the hooking-together is the easy part, and we'll still be far from real understanding. On the other hand, maybe I would have been a skeptic back in 1989, too, when he was telling people about this crazy thing called the World Wide Web... *8)
Rating: - Like Having a Chat with Gutenberg
Berners-Lee has created something so universal that 50 years from now we won't even remember it had an inventor. Who can remember the inventor of television or radio?
The goodness of the man shines through. He wants to make the world a better place and he has already. He has a pespective on it all, placing the birth of his first child above his amazing technical achievement. This book is a good read, for those of us who used Mosaic and those who never heard of Windows 3.1.
I would compare Berners-Lee to Gandhi, who achieved more through forceful ideas than by brute intimidation. The greatest idea is the openness of HTML. Read and learn why this works where other new ideas have failed.
Brian Black
Rating: - Engaging background, future vision
I've been online since 94, build sites, and teach web-related classes. This book is a wonderful testament to the *philosophy* of universal access -- freedom from hardware and software handcuffs that continue to plague general computing today.
We (USA) don't stand for a lack of interoperability in other infrastructure products (phone, fax, gasoline, railroads, electricity, TV signals, etc). Why should we with computing systems?
TBL says we don't have to. And thanks to him today, on the WWW, we don't.
So it lacks background on TCP/IP. So what? This isn't a "technical" book. It's a history book; a philosophical treatise. One man's vision of technology as a community building tool.
Where are we going? Where *should* we be going with this technology? How private is private - and why should you care? The second half of the book should be mandatory reading for all regulators and elected officials.
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