Weaving The Web by TimBernersLee
ISBN 0062515861 On the history of the WorldWideWeb from his own (uniquely qualified) perspective, including comments on MarcAndreessen and NetScape, etc. He also talks about what he wants the Web to become in relation to society, and what the WorldWideWebConsortium is doing to make progress in that direction. -- RandyStafford
One of the interesting things about the original Cern Web was that it was intended for collaborative editing; the browse-only thing only really took off with Mosaic. Hmmm. Sounds like the Wiki.
Exactly right. In the book he articulates a two-part vision for the Web, the first part of which is "people-to-people communication through shared knowledge". This is exactly what the WikiWikiWeb facilitates - the "inter-creation", as he puts it, of a shared body of knowledge. In fact, I sent him an email message after reading his book, to call his attention to the WikiWikiWeb. -- RandyStafford
Hey, where else could I have left a question on the web 2-3 months back, have it answered only in the last last couple of days, but then for the key point about inter-creation to arise out of two people's interaction! The existence proof is with Wiki!
Tim took a look at our Wiki clone around six months ago, asked a few questions and moved on. Do let me know what you hear back from him. -- RichardDrake
I thought the first half of the book was a great read. The second half, wherein he takes a more current and forward-looking perspective, I found less interesting. YourMileageMayVary. -- PatrickCorcoran
Tim points to the future in an audio stream: (http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_play_stream.html?stream_id=616) Listen online or download the mp3.
He also gave a lecture to the Royal Society recently called WWW Past & Future. The slides are online:
http://www.w3.org/2003/Talks/0922-rsoc-tbl/