Today, the Web turns 20 years old. In the TED talk embedded above, Tim Berners-Lee recalls how he invented the World Wide Web twenty years ago. It was a “play project” that his boss let him do on the side. Berners-Lee notes that the original Web was for connecting documents together online, and then argues quite eloquently why the Web now has to evolve from linked documents to linked data.
Of course, that evolution is already well under way. Just look at the explosion of APIs everywhere. The Web is becoming a massive interlinked computer, and computers need data. As more and more data becomes linked across the Web, the more that it can be accessed, analyzed, and computed. As Berners-Lee says, “Data is relationships.”
That’s deep bro…
wow…20 years…
Check this video out…its on a pretty similar note
http://www.yout...re=channel_page
When there is absolutely nothing else to write about, you can also throw in a post about how this blog’s comments section turns into a massive spam machine. Smart babes are… whatever.
Goes without saying Berners-Lee’s genius has moved the world closer together and helped create millions of jobs and great wealth for many.
With its share of problems due to the misuse by some…
I would even go further:
ANY “progress” that humankind makes is actually not positive. And not negative.
It’s just NEUTRAL.
It’s just continuous “movement”, change of our “realities”.
We’re not getting happier or less happier. We just change.
Happy birthday Michael!
That’s a bit crazy, it sounds like exactly what Facebook is doing!
I think it goes way beyond facebook, facebook cannot provide data such as government, scientific, weather, natural…
I think the idea is ultimately to create a cloud intelligent to help human being about almost anything.
Today the best available candidate on the Internet to do some meaningful stuff out of the data already available is Google. Who knows, Google might become a living cloud intelligent at some point in the future, figuring out the relationships and trends between data and suggesting solutions for any question we might have.
SKYNET
It is not only the Web’s birthday, it is also Michael’s. Coincidence? I think not.
Michael = The Web
The Web = Michael
that is all ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know.
Shut up you idiot!!!
What exactly is your problem and what do you have against India?
I don’t think he has a problem with India or Indians…I think the problem is with you.
You seem to always have to be on every post on TC
LOL..there are quite a few that way..just that they are not named ‘Smart babes are sexy’ that you clicked only to find that it was not what you wanted to see..
???
“You seem to always have to be on every post on TC”
Hmm, why don’t you look back at the last 15 TC articles. I have made comments (which were all on topic) on 2-3 of them. My math may be rusty but 3/15 last time I checked did not equal 100%
“He doesn’t have problems with India and Indians”
Yeah right. That is why in the past he has called me a smelly £$%^ from Mumbai.
This stupidity needs to stop.
Anjali Sen
Yeah I always appreciate Anjali’s comments. Her blog isn’t bad either!
stop embarrassing indians
We should be thinking and talking about “HyperInformation” not just “HyperText”… HyperText is a subset of the larger and more interesting problem.
linked data is most powerful when organized with a standard structured locator format. most everything we could ever want to know is already out there in some garbled algore format. ever wonder why we dont have a rolodex location engine for the internet? ever wonder where we would be if we used the term “Location” instead of “Search” for data discovery? Search can never compete with Location. when tim talks about “linked data” hes talking about how our urls interconnect and communicate. right now our url mayhem has only confused and polluted the internet more. data can flow unadulterated when a standard url location based natural language format is present. the communication and location of this data is everything. “linked data” works efficeintly through its ability to communicate naturally.
http://seesmic.com/Q7B9X13aTE
TheoryLocator.com – just thinking
Yeah. In a world of HyperInformation, pages on TechCrunch wouldn’t just be text to read, they would be “little databases.” Today, machines can’t easily figure out the difference between a title, a byline, or story content on TechCrunch. But, if TechCrunch used RDF/A to markup their pages with semantic concepts, then all sorts of code could extract info from them. It’s pretty simple. All they would have to do is add a few attributes like “property=’title’” or “property=’by-line’” to the ’s that contain that content on TechCrunch. A little bit of semantic tagging would go a far way towards making the Semantic Web (hyperinformation) pervasive…
bob wyman
what i am doing on TC is domain hypertagging. example i want to find a subscription based software offering. i remember a company profiled on TC. Zooora or something like that. instead i go to google and type in subscriptionlocator.com and wella. Zuora is located. now thats powerful. when combined with a locator network of over 1300 vertical natural language location based web properties its unfathomable.
Onelocator.com – first and foremost
@Locator guy,
How will you remember that you use SubscriptionLocator.com for that Zoora article?
because i always try to use the best possible domain i own and that is relevant to the article i comment on. like now when i respond i will easily be able to Google respondlocator.com and find a cluster of commenters i have responded too. thus the coined term ” vertical locator clustering.”
Excellent. Berners-Lee is a true innovator, as Vinton Cerf and others who brilliantly contributed over the years, including Marc Andreessen and his team at NCSA by creating Mosaic, the first browser capable of showing images…
Al Gore still stupidly insists that he “created the Internet,” He is nothing more than a bloated fool.
Although I agree that he is bloated, and a jet setting hypocrite on global warming, I have to stand up for the truth here.
http://www.snop...es/internet.asp
Did he invent it? No. Did he create it? By himself, no, but with other people, yes. He helped bring about the commercialization of it from non governmental entities through co-sponsorship of specific bills mentioned in the article above.
Great!
TBL’s thoughts on the Semantic Web and the future of the web are really exciting and impressive. There’s a good amount of movement toward some of those goals now (Microformats today; SPARQL, RDF tomorrow).
That is amazing that we are even watching this.
Great Post/Video.
awww no longer a teen
Attah – With its share of problems due to the misuse by some…
If anyone is currently researching new ideas to respond to the mounting challenges in cyber security you should check out the Global Security Challenge website: http://www.glob...tychallenge.com.
The GSC have just launched a new award (cash grant, mentorship and networking opportunity) for researchers and small companies working in cyber security.
How times have changed!!
thats really great amazing date! Salute to all!
I love how this “play-project” turned into something that is now mandatory in our everyday life.
I invented the internet {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/ag6dkf1yAs_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”I invented the internet ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/BIGRfX4WnH”}}}
Hey, I have to say that was pretty funny!
Innovation is part vision and part showmanship; and a huge dose of luck and timing. That is not to understate Tim’s vision, passion, and hard work.
He makes a case for ‘link data’ as the next wave. That is one trend. We should not ignore multiple waves of change that impact the new web.
Exciting times.
No doubt future is the “online PC”.
No need to carry netbook and laptops, just open yoursite.com/youname or somesite.com/username and you have it all.
Now question is if we don’t have the laptops then from where to open the site?
Answers:Your mobile phones.
TED is just a platform to collaborate the innovative ideas via groundbreaking minds.
http://twitter.com/TED_TALKS
i like him~~~~~~~~
Tim Berners-Lee never fails to inspire. It’s amazing to watch the human collective evolve through the network protocols he architected.
He is as right today as he was twenty years ago.
Nice post! Check out my site too at http://macmaniapodcast.com.
Is it just me or did his accent move gradually across the Atlantic in a eastward direction, arriving somewhere near the Azores by the end? Crazy.
The talk was amazing too (but that goes without saying).
Happy b-day! Wow, the internet is 20 years young. So exciting to think about upcoming innovations.
well, apple invented hypercard which also was a document linking system in 1987…which was before the web…so the idea was already out there to link documents
Erick,
the phrase “explosion of APIs” shows that there is something big going on, that just some people, including yourself, are noticing, and it should be explained in simple terms (see how Jim Jubak explains financial stuff) to the others. I bet that more than 50% of TC readers would really appreciate if you guys could write some postings where you could describe and maybe explain the current trends in the web world and show examples of what it could do and how it could evolve.
I am dead serious – this would be really interesting!
Cheers.
mikeT
This guy is amazing! He is a genius and He deserves to be treated as one.
I deeply repect him.
Excellent Talk!
I find the idea of linking data across social networking services concerning. Enabling someone to build a detailed profile on me, based on the company i keep across platforms with tools such as Delver.com… No Thanks
He is pretty down to earth for the guy who invented the internet. I like the direction he is going and once again, most will not understand with much clariy that which he is trying to accomplish. I’m somewhere in the middle myself. As the net expands and more and more personal data is online and inevitably at risk, I’ll be utilizing sites like This digital security one often.
A lot of people have made fortunes from the internet. I just wished I was one of those early birds who started their internet business.
Kudos to you Tim for inventing the internet. It has become one of the great equalizers in business nowadays that lets young entrepreneurs as young as 13 make fortunes out from it. All it takes are some booming idea!
It’s really nice to know that we have gotten better 20 years ago. There are lots of things change because of the birth of the WWW.