Auntie Beeb (the semi-affectionate name for the BBC) has a documentary series called I Wish I’d Thought Of That, which starts off with an interview with Tim Berners-Lee and Weaving the World Wide Web. Sir Tim is to www what James Brown is to Soul, except that the Godfather of Soul didn’t invent Soul. (Sorry, I’m ripping some James Brown vinyl right now with my new USB turntable).
I listen to BBC online a lot, mainly to counter the abuse of the Queen’s English that constantly bombards me in Sunny California – the abuse of the word “like”, my daughters included, is a particular affront.
I like listening to Sir Tim, because he tends to shy away from the media, but also because I have this enormous feeling of sympathy for him – he should be the richest man on the planet given what he did. He’s up there with those two guys who invented the first spreadsheet and forgot to patent it.
Sir Tim is the creator of a very cool map which describes the internet and the web: where it comes from and where its going to. Tributaries from earlier concepts like Ted Nelson’s Xanadu and global identifiers like phone numbers, flow into the World Wide Web lake. Standards and protocols are included and today’s big players are there: Microsoft and Google and also the Tor of Cism in the Wasted Arid Lands which includes areas such as Patent Peaks and Proprietary Pass. Tor of Cism is apparently an anagram of Microsoft, so its mentioned twice. Checkout the Quagmire of ISP Discrimination and the Censorship Swamp, and everything flows into the Sea of Interoperability, so it looks like we’re on the road to nowhere.
Listen to the Queen’s English at I Wish I’d Thought Of That
Study the map at w3.org
