Can a clueless change the course of history? TOTim Berners-LeeThe concern to find a substitute for memory led him to create an information system which he baptized with the name ofWorld Wide Web(great world spider web) and that today is recognized as the largest and most democratic means of communication in existence.
The human brain stores its memories randomly. Some people think of a person they haven’t seen for years when they smell a perfume on the street. And who, suddenly, remembers that the gas was left on when they asked for a fire. Reflecting on this unpredictable functioning of the brain, Berners-Lee, an English physicist dedicated to computer science, thought to create a software system that emulated this structure of capricious mental leaps. “It seemed to me that it would be very useful to maintain that random form of associations between concepts that anyone makes in real life – in theory, most people’s brains do them very well, but that was not my case.” Thus, the confusion of Berners-Lee, who admits that he forgets names and faces easily, led him to try to produce a software model that would replace his deficient memory.
Berners-Lee’s first approach to these ideas came in 1980, when he was only 23 years old, and he created a program called Inquire.(Question). However, little could he imagine that his invention would become a symbol of the information society, characterized by a combination of letters and punctuation marks like this: http: // www. The three w’s, corresponding to the acronym of World Wide Web in Internet addresses, together with http, which stands for HiperText Transfer Protocol, have become ubiquitous in any medium. They are in advertisements, in newspapers and magazines, in official forms and are even exchanged between friends as if they were trading cards. And the fault lies with Berners-Lee, this virtuoso of the computer keys, an instrument that he only abandons to put himself before other keys, those of the piano, with which he delights his friends.
Contact with IT
Young Tim’s early computer dances, whose parents met (a premonition?) Making one of the first commercial computers in existence, were directed to building an interconnected system in imitation of the neuron. His background had already been set; In 1945 people began to think about creating programs that would allow quick access to information, making links between various contents and routes, that is, jumps through the information. The term hypertext, which means to automatically link several documents whose contents are related, had been coined in 1965. In fact, graphic systems to operate with the computer (Macintosh, Windows …) are based on applying hypertext principles and also the organization of content on a CD-ROM. In its most modern version, hypertext ensures that, with a simple click of the computer mouse on a certain word, it is possible to jump to another page that expands content or deals with topics related to it.
But all the juice had not yet been extracted from the hypertext, because links could only be established between files resident in a single database. It was as if the brain could only relate one part of his memories to one another, but was unable to access the others. Berners-Lee himself, who had made his first programs in this way, realized these limitations: “Being constrained in the borders of a database, of a single source of information, was too boring, it was not enough interest.” In his opinion, to enrich the information it was not necessary to try to centralize it, but to disperse it, to unite diverse points whose contents were complementary.
The opportunity to put his ideas into practice came when he was working as a computer consultant at CERN (Center Européen de Recherche Nucleaire), the large international particle physics laboratory based in Geneva. This research center is divided into several locations along the French-Swiss border and, as research on the basic elements of the subject progresses through the simultaneous work of scientists from all over the world, CERN has collaborators scattered throughout the five continents. “I thought it would be much easier if all the people who were always asking me questions could just read them in my database; and also that it would be better for me to know what they were doing, reading their information in their database.”
The idea became a proposal to CERN to link all its departments and collaborators through hypertext. The Berners-Lee report already pointed out some of what would be the two key characteristics of the future World Wide Web: a hypermedia system (hypertext in various media) where information could take the form of text, graphic or video and whose links have a global reach. From there, Berners-Lee programmed all the elements that shape the Web: its computer language, the technical communication system and the organization of the identifying addresses.
Did the Internet make you rich?
Berners-Lee is being asked all day why he hasn’t gotten rich off the internet.The overwhelming success of the World Wide Web, which began to be sensed in 1993 with the appearance of the first browsers(metaphorical name that is given to the programs with which the web pages can be seen) and culminated in 1995 with the arrival of the Netscape Navigator, it does not seem to have touched it too much. It has allowed him, yes, to work in the United States, at the mythical Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). But little else. He does not have a large car, he has been dragging an old Volkswagen Rabbit for 13 years, he does not preside over any successful new company, despite the hundreds of this format that have appeared lately, and his office is small.
Didn’t the creature’s father then realize how far his invention was going to go? Obviously it was difficult to foresee, but it is that, in addition, making money with the Web would have meant for Berners-Lee to sacrifice his spirit and mortgage his development, since the company that owns the technology would only have been willing to share it upon payment. “If I had created a company called Web Incorporated, the World Wide Web would have become just another proprietary system, it would not have become universal as it is now.”
Not mentioning names, but pointing to a software company, Berners-Lee gives an example: “If the Web were owned by a company, everyone would have to wait for its research department to produce the next version of their browser. , and this would not be good. For something like the Web to exist and expand, it has to be based on public and free standards. The network must not have an owner. “
With this philosophy, Berners-Lee has become a philanthropist of the digital age, who believes in the benefits of global cooperation through technology. Perhaps this has to do with his religious faith in the Universal Unitarian Church, to whose worship he attends every Sunday with his American wife and two children, and in which the idea is practiced that “working together is necessary to achieve the harmony and knowledge “.
Having ruled out his career in the business field, Berners-Lee has settled for being the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which is no small feat. It is an international body that functions as a kind of parliamentary forum for all those who develop web technology. It attempts to agree on common specifications for the new products that are emerging in this medium. Thus, it is intended to maintain universality, the cornerstone of the Web and the main cause of its validity and dynamism.
And it is that the growth of the Internet is impressive. “I measure time in Web years and each one lasts only 2.6 months“, says Berners-Lee who is still only 41 real years old, although, if you follow his particular calendar and taking into account that he invented the Web in 1990, he would now have 34 real years plus 32.3 digital years. Not a single day goes by without him some technical novelty is presented in the great universe of the Internet, some improvement that allows to curl the curl within hypermedia and create Web pages that progressively bring this environment closer to a mix of design magazine, advertising spot and cartoons. of the currently most groundbreaking and striking media.
Millions of users
No one can deny that the Web that today more than 50 million people look around the world (one million of them do it from Spain) has little to do with the one invented by a physicist concerned with improving communication between scientists. Does Berners-Lee like his creature now? Do you think you have shamelessly sold yourself to the more commercial aspects? Do you know where the network is going? “I was hoping it would be more interactive,” he laments. “It has been made easy to access, handle and read web pages; but if you want to create content you have to know and master a computer language that is too complicated.” If this selfless architect of the digital building succeeds in carrying out his philosophy, one thing is certain: the Web will be easy and it will be for everyone.
Jose Angel Martos
This interview was published in October 1997, in number 197 of VERY Interesting.
