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The Internet

Tim Berners-Lee Enters Blogosphere 101

Posted by Zonk from the has-nice-things-to-say-about-it dept.
Saiyine writes "Sir Timothy 'Tim' John Berners-Lee has entered the world of blogging. From his first post: 'In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights ... Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space.'"
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Tim Berners-Lee Enters Blogosphere More

Tim Berners-Lee Enters Blogosphere

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  • A plague! (Score:5, Funny)

    by aarku ( 151823 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @07:44PM (#14281794) Journal
    Woe onto the editor who posts a story with the word "blogosphere" in the headline.
    • With Timothy 'Tim' John Berners-Lee in the body no less!

    • Re:A plague! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Cl1mh4224rd ( 265427 )
      Woe onto the editor who posts a story with the word "blogosphere" in the headline.
      I've never been fond of the word "blog" myself. It sounds to me like something you do when you have a stomach flu...

  • I for one (Score:2, Funny)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 )
    I for one, welcome our new Blogging Lord

  • In related news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Demona ( 7994 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @07:45PM (#14281805) Homepage
    Tim Berners-Lee disables blog comments.

  • Yeah, But.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CWRUisTakingMyMoney ( 939585 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @07:50PM (#14281825)
    Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself? Surely, he couldn't have overlooked the ease of vandalism on the system he envisioned, but a community of scientists is much less likely to vandalize each other's work than the population at large. Wikis are very popular, but so is their vandalism. Heck, Slashdot just did a story about that today with Wikipedia.
    • Heck, Slashdot just did a story about that today with Wikipedia.



      Only 1? Crap, that means the next dupe should be up in 3...2...

    • Re:Yeah, But.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself?

      The first HTML browser he wrote was called 'WorldWideWeb'. You figure it out.

      Surely, he couldn't have overlooked the ease of vandalism on the system he envisioned, but a community of scientists is much less likely to vandalize each other's work than the population at large.

      I don't think he envisioned anonymous collaborative editing.
      • >I don't think he envisioned anonymous collaborative editing.

        Tim did envision editable-browsers in his early web design. He had that people wouldnt have to create web content by going outside the browser. But he nor the National Center for Supercomputing implement that feature by the time Mosaic popularized the web.

    • Re:Yeah, But.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:55PM (#14282536) Homepage
      You clearly missed the bit in the abstract that said:

      "...if one had access rights..."
    • Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself?

      He was trying to create that network for almost 10 years before before that time.

      Then, not only did he create an excellent way to do it, he published a public site that would be called a BLOG now except it didn't allow for comments to be added by visitors.

      Fast forward 15 years and he has a new BLOG except it now has user comment capability.

      That's it in a nu

  • Blog runs Drupal (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dreadlord ( 671979 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @07:50PM (#14281830) Journal
    Interestingly, Tim Berners-Lee uses Drupal [drupal.org] to run his blog.

  • Thus MySpace? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @07:54PM (#14281851) Homepage
    At a public library computer lab, the most common use of the machines is people gawking at other people's pictures on myspace. At any given time, this is about 70 percent of the usage.

    Though I'm definitely thankful for this wonderful thing that Sir Tim envisioned, there's a part of me that suffers a bit. For every tool created, there are good uses and bad uses, and yeah I know I'm probably not fit to decide which category myspace belongs in...but I bet that what we most commonly use the web for nowadays is not what even Sir Tim had in mind.

    • Re:Thus MySpace? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Neoprofin ( 871029 )
      Truly the creativity he invisioned has been wasted on finding new and bizarre fetish porn or downloading the new 50 cent album? That's the tragedy of life I guess.

      While that may be the case one cannot dispute the postive impact that the WWW has had on exposing people to others viewpoints and giving even the most awkward of fringe views a home to be expressed.

    • Re:Thus MySpace? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Malangali ( 932979 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @08:15PM (#14281950)
      At a public library computer lab, the most common use of the machines is people gawking at other people's pictures on myspace. At any given time, this is about 70 percent of the usage.

      Henry Ford probably never envisioned Hummers driving over curbs to get to the best parking spaces at the mall.

      The Wright brothers probably never envisioned people flying massive airplanes into buildings as weapons.

      The inventors of the television probably never envisioned "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire."

      Thomas Edison, when he invented the phonograph, most certainly did not imagine gangsta rap.

      Inventions happen, but what happens when they are released into the wild is not in the hands of the inventor. And really, why should it matter what the inventor was thinking of when s/he first developed the innovation?

      • Re:Thus MySpace? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Eberlin ( 570874 )
        The point is that for every innovation presented to the masses, there is a commercialization, and inevitably, a complete bastardization of the original concept. Even you point this out.

        It is more a statement against human nature than it is about the vision of one man.

        • Re:Thus MySpace? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by osu-neko ( 2604 )
          Actually, the most telling statement about human nature here is how, when someone uses a new tool in a way someone else doesn't like, it's called "bastardization". That it happens isn't a statement against human nature, but that it's viewed that way by some certainly is...
        • a little tidbit [wikipedia.org] about TBL some companies in the news recently could learn from.

          While the component ideas of the World Wide Web are simple, Berners-Lee's insight was to combine them in a way which is still exploring its full potential. Perhaps his greatest single contribution, though, was to make his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due.

      • >The Wright brothers probably never envisioned people flying massive airplanes into buildings as weapons.

        But some one asked one of the Wright brothers what aeroplanes would be useful for.

        And he said "War."

        No I don't have a reference.
        • Sure, the Wright Bros. pictured WWI sorts of military applications - aerial recognizance, shooting guns from the cockpit, dropping explosive cannonballs. But planes the size of ocean liners? Supersonic fighter jets? They weren't even dreaming about these sorts of creations while they were in Kitty Hawk risking their lives to prove that heavier-than-air flight was even possible.

      • Re:Thus MySpace? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Philo Farnsworth was once asked on What's My Line if he had invented some kind of a machine that might be painful when used. He answered "yes, sometimes it's most painful," because he had invented the television.
    • the universal availability of porn outweighs any of the negatives you allude too.

      cheers.
    • Though I'm definitely thankful for this wonderful thing that Sir Tim envisioned, there's a part of me that suffers a bit. For every tool created, there are good uses and bad uses, and yeah I know I'm probably not fit to decide which category myspace belongs in...but I bet that what we most commonly use the web for nowadays is not what even Sir Tim had in mind.

      Now wait a minute. Do you think Sir Tim envisioned a tech news discussion site where the editors are too lazy to check for grammar, spelling, dupes

    • Re:Thus MySpace? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 )
      >but I bet that what we most commonly use the web for nowadays is not what even Sir Tim had in mind.

      So? Linus probably never thought he'd be writing code for missile trajectory systems. Edison would be completely and utterly confused by 21st century life, culture, and technology.

      As far as myspace goes, to each his own. At the very least it has a positive social function in the exchange of ideas and networking, albeit for a certain demographic. Just because you aren't a teen anymore doesn't mean that s
      • As far as myspace goes, to each his own. At the very least it has a positive social function in the exchange of ideas and networking, albeit for a certain demographic. Just because you aren't a teen anymore doesn't mean that suddenly all teens suck or that things were 'better' before.

        Well, I'm a student (Read: teenager) at a major metropolitan high school, and myspace is everywhere. I think it is almost entirely stupid. I've looked around on it on occasion, and I sometimes wonder if my peers have comp

      • Linus probably never thought he'd be writing code for missile trajectory systems.

        I know a guy that does write code for missile trajectory systems. They do use Linux for some of their dev/build machines and rarely for limited unit tests and simulation. That's the limit though and I gathered it's mainly just because gcc and the like are convenient to run there. The missiles and their control systems run a bare-bones commercial real-time OS. Had I expected any commodity OS, the reality is about the maxim

    • Here's Tim's brief list of his envisioned uses of the web, from 1990:

      Here are some of the many areas in which hypertext is used. Each area has its specific requirements in the way of features required.

      * General reference data - encyclopaedia, etc.
      * Completely centralized publishing - online help, documentation, tutorial etc
      * More or less centralized dissemination of news which has a limited life
      • If they are using mysapce.com at a library they are wasting resources. A lot of those people standing in line waiting for a computer actually have something important to do (which may include research on the web).

        I have no problem with myspace.com per se. But for someone to waste time on it at a library is just "not right".
        • On the other hand, what is important to you could be entirely different as to what's important to someone else.

          I post a great deal on all sorts of forums and discussion boards; some are for pleasure (which is equally as important as anything else) and some are important to share knowledge etc.

          Besides, when it comes to a library, if the library is public then those wanting to use it for pleasure or "unimportant" things have paid their taxes to use it just as much as you have. In the case of a school or colle

        • the poster didn't mention a line, and didn't mention that it was stopping other people from using the lab. anyway in a university setting it would make some amount of sense to give priority to academic and scholastic use.

          i agree with the guy next down below, for the record.
        • If they are using mysapce.com at a library they are wasting resources. A lot of those people standing in line waiting for a computer actually have something important to do

          Like posting to Slashdot!

          Heaven forbid that those time-wasting MySpacers should prevent you from getting First Post...
    • At a public library computer lab, the most common use of the machines is people gawking at other people's pictures on myspace. At any given time, this is about 70 percent of the usage.

      No no no. Many of us gawk at our own pictures at myspace.

      We're that hot!
  • People forget that when Dave Winer started his own scripting.com blog after writing for wired that he cedited the very first blog to Tim Berners-Lee To say eh entered blogs is in fact amiss statement..maybe the term re-=awakening should have been used??

  • Oh great another blog "news" story geez (Score:5, Funny)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @08:25PM (#14281998) Journal
    What do I care who this "Berners-Lee" guy is anyway. Another useless nobody, why I bet that if I travel back in time and shoot him it will have absolutly no eff

  • This story is technically incorrect (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @08:40PM (#14282048)
    The first ever webpage, Tim's homepage, was a blog.

  • HTML WYSIWYG editing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @08:41PM (#14282062) Homepage Journal
    From TFA:
    Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor.
    I thought the idea of WYSIWYG goes completely against HTML's separation of content from presentation. I can't imagine why TBL would say something like this, perhaps his meaning of WYSIWYG is different from mine?
    • Content is separate from presentation today (or should be), but it wasn't always so - CSS and stuff is a (relatively) new idea. Back in those days, HTML really was different - it wasn't a general mark-up language for document structure, but rather something that "just worked" in a certain way without people thinking about it that much. And documents were simpler, too: you didn't have complicated constructs designed to give a "presentation", but rather a page consisting of things like paragraphs, headlines,
      • Even a bulleted list needs a style. Certainly paragraphs do. Note how many options there are in CSS for controlling the style of each one.

        In the original web, the idea was more that such style would be determined by the reader (via the browser), than by the writer/content-creator.

        Note that in a Wiki the author has no control over the style -- either there is a site-wide style, or the reader gets to pick a style for all the pages. Same idea for the original web.

      • Re:HTML WYSIWYG editing? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:33PM (#14282477)

        Content is separate from presentation today (or should be), but it wasn't always so - CSS and stuff is a (relatively) new idea.

        That's not really accurate. It's true that HTML 3.2 included a hell of a lot of presentational markup, but that was because the W3C decided to publish a specification based on what everybody was doing (i.e. browser extensions) rather than what should be done.

        If you turn the clock back further, you'll find that older HTML specifications didn't concern themselves with presentation much at all, and were designed to allow varying styles, including stylesheets. For example, read the HTML 2.0 specification [w3.org], and you'll see that provision is explicitly made for stylesheets. Yes, you can use CSS with an HTML 2 document, even though CSS hadn't been developed by the time HTML 2.0 was published. I quote:

        The LINK element is typically used to indicate authorship, related indexes and glossaries, older or more recent versions, document hierarchy, associated resources such as style sheets, etc.

        CSS is far from the first stylesheet language, there have been others, such as DSSSL. It's a shame browser vendors didn't implement stylesheets much sooner, but the fault lies with them, not with HTML, as you can see.

        There was no *need* to separate content from presentation then

        You are only really thinking about "presentation" in terms of the exact styling given to particular element types in a high-res graphical environment. Presentation is a wider topic than that. Separating content from presentation was just as necessary back then - otherwise you'd have content written on a terminal that can fit 100 characters in a row screwing up on terminals that can only fit 80 characters in a row, and so on. Tim Berners-Lee had this to say on the matter, in his book about the origins of the WWW, Weaving the Web:

        A philosophical rule was that HTML should convey the structure of a hypertext document, but not details of its presentation.

        As far as Tim using the term 'WYSIWYG', I think he's misusing the term as a synonym for 'graphical editor' as many people do, rather than having any deeper meaning.

    • Yes, what Tim means by WYSIWYG (I'm pretty sure) is immersive editing [w3.org], a direct manipulation interface [wikipedia.org].

      It's WYSIWYG if you think of the document in an abstract sense, separated from all style (or in your own style -- knowing that others will see it in their style).
    • I thought the idea of WYSIWYG goes completely against HTML's separation of content from presentation. I can't imagine why TBL would say something like this, perhaps his meaning of WYSIWYG is different from mine?

      You totally missed the point; he's not saying that HTML should be edited with a WYSIWYG editor; he's saying that he's surprised that people would be willing to do things the right way, without an editor. Of course, little did he know that most people weren't willing to do so, hence the development o

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bunnyman ( 121652 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @09:00PM (#14282137)
    Dropping the term "blogosphere" for a moment, we can see that the inventor of the World Wide Web has a blog, a "web log" if you will.

    So the headline should be:

    Inventor of WWW Uses His Own Invention
  • ...comes from "kid mercury," and what a gem it is:

    "dude, www was a really good idea.

    it's like the ultimate idea, man. i mean, i thought i had some good ideas, but www trumps everything. it's up there with like electricity. or music.

    thanks for sharing."

    Second place, from "Sean":

    "You're the man now dog!"

    Now, let's mull that one over for a second. When Sir Tim mentioned blogs and wikis as the primary examples of the wonderful user-created content that the Web is now overflowing with, didn't he leave something [ytmnd.com]
  • Call me when he enters the NEOblogosphere

  • Blogosphere (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tero ( 39203 ) on Sunday December 18, 2005 @03:11AM (#14283506)
    Anyone using the word "Blogosphere" should be executed publicly.
  • Tim Berners-Lee now using the read/write Web: Now that's what I call *dogfood*.
  • I don't think I'd be able to stop telling people what I'd done if I'd played such a major part in the development of the web as good old TBL.
    You have a website? lovely, I invented those you know!
    You're an internet millionaire? Fantastic! You'd be a nobody if it wasn't for me!
    Dear amazon.com, send me free stuff. I invented the web.
    I don't think I'd ever get tired of that.

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