Who do we love today? No. 3

“The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience,” …

“The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues.” …

“What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance.”…

“My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet.”

– Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web¹ on the BBC website

Today we love…Tim Berners-Lee

The first time I ever used the World Wide Web was in 1994 or 1995 (I can’t remember which), at my university computer lab. Theoretically all of the workstations could access the web but only if you were privy to the proxy server details, but it wasn’t freely available to the general student body. Every time I went in there to type an essay, I would click on the NSCA Mosaic icon and not be able to connect to anything, to my deep disappointment.

One morning, I discovered that the proxy setting was active on the browser! I was on the Web! I can’t remember what page loaded but I didn’t care….Some time later, twilight started to fall and I realised that eight hours had passed and I hadn’t left my seat once!

Anyhow, reading the article today on the BBC website reminded me of this. Every time I read an article about Mr (Sir) Berners-Lee, I imagine that he wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror and thinks “Yep, I invented the World Wide Web”.

I wonder how that feels?

For extraordinary innovation and general all round greatness…Tim Berners-Lee, we love you!!!

PS – the photo of Tim Berners-Lee is the Wikimedia Commons photo from his Wikipedia entry and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.

¹ Of course, you also have to mention his colleague Robert Cailliau for his contribution too