Web inventor sees his brainchild ready for big leap
By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent
The World Wide Web is on the cusp of making its next big leap to
become an open environment for collaboration and its inventor said he
has not been so optimistic in years.
Still, Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented and then gave away the
World Wide Web, warns that Internet crime and anti-competitive
behavior need to be fought tooth and nail.
A lot of new technology to make the Web smarter and easier to use is
becoming available after many years, he said.
"My personal view is that a lot of it is coming together now. That is
very gratifying to see. We're moving into another mode with
established technology. I'm very optimistic at this moment,"
Berners-Lee said in a telephone interview ahead of the annual World
Wide Web conference, which will be bigger than ever before when it
opens in Edinburgh, Scotland on Monday.
"The whole industrial environment is more exciting. We had the bubble
and the burst, but now you see a low of young companies again. There's
renewed enthusiasm among VCs (venture capitalists) to invest in
start-ups. I get a feeling of upsurge in activity."
Roughly twice as much money is being invested in European Internet
start-ups compared with two years ago, according to venture capitalist
community Tornado-Insider.
The man who in 1990 designed the key ingredients of the Web, while at
the European Particle Physics Laboratory CERN in Geneva, to let his
fellow scientists work together even when in other parts of the world,
is more upbeat than a few years ago.
"Four years ago, the patent problems were getting in the way. A lot of
us were worried, because it looked like the whole thing could get
bogged down," he said, referring to attempts by private companies to
patent key software ingredients needed on Web sites and charge
royalties for usage.
Thanks to the help of many, royalty free licences are now available,
said the man who never saw a cent of royalties for his invention which
set off an industry that is now generating hundreds of billions of
euros (dollars) a year.
REALISING A VISION
Currently the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is
a U.S.-headquartered forum of companies and organizations to improve
the Web, Berners-Lee is only now realising his early vision of a
two-way Web where people can easily work together on the same page and
where the content on a page can be recognized by computers.
Google Maps, whose geographic maps turn up on other sites combined
with services, and photo sharing site Flickr, where members comment on
each other's postings and developers can use the pictures to create
new applications, are early examples of how Web sites can combine data
from different sources.
"Several years ago we said: 'What a shame that we can't go to that
website and find all that stuff in there.' We had a loose roadmap 5
years ago. Steadily we've been making progress," said Berners-Lee,
adding that most of the work had been done.
"Of course there are people who say: 'Why didn't Tim do that from the
start?' But it's more complicated," he said.
Elements are already filtering through, such as web sites that do not
have to be refreshed entirely when only parts are being updated.
A new query language, SPARQL (pronounced "Sparkle"), is designed to
make Web pages easier for machines to read, allowing all sorts of
different data to be put to work on the Web.
"SPARQL will make a huge difference," Berners-Lee said.
Other targets on his list are to expand the Web to mobile devices and
to access it with mouth and ear.
"You can see so many ways the Web is taking off in so many different
directions," Berners-Lee said.
CONCERNS
He is no fan, however, of fenced-off Web areas specially designed for
mobile devices such as the new ".mobi" suffix. He wants websites and
devices to be smart enough to figure out what the best way is to
present information to consumers.
He is also concerned about how some Internet providers in the United
States have started to filter data, giving priority to premium data
for which the operator receives an additional fee. They can do this,
because they own the cables, the service, the portals and other key
applications.
"The public will demand an open Internet," he said.
On his blog, at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4,
Berners-Lee pays hommage to the democratic principles of the designers
of the Internet who decided that all data packets were created
equal. "I tried then to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal,
neutral, platform."
"It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet,
and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet
application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what
we are doing."
Another element of concern to Berners-Lee is "spam in general and
particularly phishing," referring to criminals trying to fish for
credit card details and other private data.
Web sites have to be much clearer in showing consumers that they are
safe, he said.
"Now, if a website exchanges a certificate a little lock appears but
it does not tell you that. A consumer is not aware of it, and may be
at a site that looks official but may not be his bank at all. What you
need is a browswer that knows what you're connecting to and tell you."
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.
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Lucas van Grinsven (reuters@telecom-digest.org)