What a Web We Have Weaved

© 2003 Boaz Rauchwerger

From the standpoint of technology, so much changed in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century.

I remember, years ago, when homes had one telephone. It usually sat on that little shelf in the hall and many people were part of party lines. Often, when you picked up the phone to call someone, there was already a conversation taking place between one of your neighbors and someone else.

We’d watch the television program “Star Trek” and see Captain Kirk flip open a fascinating small device and communicate with his shipmates. Now most everyone is imitating Captain Kirk with our own personal communications system – the cell phone.

Something else that has changed dramatically is the web that has been weaved into a communication medium called The Internet. We now nonchalantly turn on our computers and check for e-mail that arrives almost instantly from all corners of the world.

You’re getting those e-mails as a result of the genius of Tim Berners-Lee. Although the current complexities of the Internet were created by many people over the years, the World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1980.

Tim, an Oxford-trained computer consultant, wanted to find a way to keep track of all his notes. So he designed a software program that would access everything on his computer through random links.

He called this first program “Enquire” after a Victorian advice book that he first saw on his parents’ shelves. That book was called “Enquire Within Upon Everything” and it contained information about many different topics, a sort of Web of its day.

Once he had designed the special software to link all his notes, Tim thought about the possibilities of linking many different computers all over the world. He thought about that for 10 years. It was in December of 1990 that he created the first browser and server. He later would claim that the process wasn’t that difficult to figure out.

So, in an attempt to link information stored on computers everywhere, Tim created a system to give every “page” on a computer a standard address. That is now called a URL or a Universal Resource Locator. Each of these pages was made accessible through the HyperText Transfer Protocol or HTTP. This was all formatted with the HyperText Markup Language or HTML, which was visible with the first browser. And that’s what links all of us together.

Naming this new process wasn’t easy for Tim. His first idea was “The Mesh.” Next came “The Information Mine.” Take the first letters of that name and you’ve got “TIM.” There was apparently too much ego involved in that one and Tim rejected it. He finally decided to call it “The World Wide Web.”

It took a lot of promoting on Tim’s part to get others to start using the Web. Friends told him it would never work. His initial vision was a place where users would create content and information, rather than a place where people would mostly read and react. In his book, entitled “Weaving the Web,” Tim writes about steps that can be taken to get people back to his initial vision for the Web.

In that book, Tim’s vision for the web was articulated more specifically as “people-to-people” communication through shared knowledge.” As more and more people would share their insights, he felt, this medium would become a valuable body of knowledge.

In an amazing example of one person putting the needs of the masses ahead of his own, Tim renounced patent rights on the Web. He felt this would ensure its growth.

This British-born physicist is now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which is based at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, and sets software standards for the Web. He was honored by TIME magazine as one of the 100 greatest minds of the century. His creation has truly changed the way people worldwide do business, exchange ideas, entertain themselves, and communicate with one another. Thousands of new online business are being formed every day and the full impact of Tim’s creation has not yet been fully realized.

Tim Berners-Lee’s original concept for the Web was a place where users created content and information and shared that with others worldwide. To some extent, that has happened. There are now millions of web sights devoted to millions of topics and we can all do so much research and learn from the knowledge of so many.

However, to millions of people, the Web is a place to simply read and react. Many people find that they are spending hours and hours on the computer, often to the detriment of their personal lives. As in any endeavor, balance is very important.

I recall, as a little boy, the sidewalk produce stands in the city of Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. The merchants would use the old-fashioned scales to weigh the vegetables being purchased. The vegetables were placed on one side and some weights were placed on the other side. When there were enough weights, the scale balanced and then the weight of the purchase was clear.

Life is the same way. When we’re out of balance, as in the case of too much time on the computer, life tends to weigh too heavily on one side. Something is being ignored and precious moments are being lost. Spending time each day with family members and friends, taking time for a hobby, exercising or simply having some quiet times – these are the items we place on the scale of life in order to be more balanced.

Let’s be careful that we don’t get too entangled in this amazing new Web.

A Daily Affirmation of Balance

My life is in balance every day because I take time to do valuable things.