Berners-Lee writes a very fun and informative treatise on his experiences towards creating the Web as we utilize it today. The first nine chapters detail his background and history, up to his move to the United States. A lot of the material describing the internal workings of the CERN environment were absolutely compelling material. The rest of the book follows his work within the W3C, along with his long-range vision of the Web. While the book holds a time-frame of 1999/2000 - much of his observations still hold true today in 2013. ( )

His Masters Voice.

A história da Web, contada por Tim Berners-Lee, é uma história muito interessante.

Como tive de fazer um trabalho sobre uma inovação para o programa de doutoramento, escolhi a Web e comprei o livro:
Weaving the Web : The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its Inventor

Li-o em três meios dias. É impressionante a velocidade a que as coisas aconteceram, a evolução da Web e alguns dos jogos de interesses à volta dela. O livro é de 1999, por isso, obviamente, não conta a história toda.

Recomendo a leitura deste livro e do texto que escrevi sobre o assunto: http://jorgecardoso.eu/PhD/Inovacao/InovacaoWWW.html.O texto não é um resumo do livro, mas antes uma análise sob o ponto de vista da concepção da inovação (causas, tecnologias relacionadas, evolução, actores, etc). Correcções e comentários sobre o texto são bem-vindos neste post. ( )

His Masters Voice.

I love this quote from Tim Berners-Lee, the man responsible for the World Wide Web. He’s a low profile genius who never profited from his invention. I often think about him when i talk to my investment banking friends, or other people who are placing monetary gain over what really makes them happy. This is a quote from his book Weaving the Web which is a pretty good read if you’re interested in how the web came about, what the original thoughts were about it, and how it’s survived attempts by private industry (Microsoft, IBM, etc.) to control it.

People have sometimes asked me whether i am upset that i have not made a lot of money from the Web. In fact, I made some quite conscious decisions about which way to take my life. These I would not change - though i am making no comment on what i might do in the future. What does distress me, though, is how important a question it seems to be to some. This happens mostly in America, not Europe. What is maddening is the terrible notion that a person’s value depends on how important and financially successful they are, and that that is measured in terms of money. That suggests disrespect for the researchers across the globe developing ideas for the next leaps in science and technology. Core in my upbring was a value system that put monetary gain well in its place, behind things like doing what i really want to do. To use net worth as a criterion by which to judge people is to set our children’s sights on cash rather than on things that will actually make them happy. ( )