The Web is a set of associations, and in a way the Web is a representation of mankind’s knowledge … I’m really interested in getting this into grade schools.
Predictor: Berners-Lee, Tim
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for the Associated Press wire service, Frank Bajak talks with World-Wide Web originator Tim Berners-Lee. The occasion is a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Columbus, Ohio. The gathering drew approximately 600 computer network architects, and Berners-Lee was there to demonstrate his World-Wide Web. Bajak writes:”The engineers, a supercharged species from 17 countries, have wired a Hyatt Regency with high-speed data links. Their designs must enable the big jump in scale to the networks of the future. And the tools they’re developing must allow computer novices to easily browse the Internet’s rich but elusive resources as one might the local library. One topic is knowledge robots, the resource discovery tools of tomorrow that will be dispatched across networks with orders to bring back specified information or go buy or check the price on something. Another is improving audio and video transport on the network … a small group gathers around Tim Berners-Lee as he guides a reporter through his two-and-a-half-year-old software invention, World-Wide Web. A dazzling research tool, it seeks out information by establishing a web of interconnections in a world of random resources. The secret is hypertext, highlighted sections of text – or pictures themselves – that the user points to with a computer mouse and clicks on. That brings a new, more specific body of information onto the screen. ‘The Web is a set of associations, and in a way the Web is a representation of mankind’s knowledge,’ says Berners-Lee, a ruddy-cheeked Brit who has moved via the software into files at his workplace, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland. ‘We’re going halfway across the world and picking up stuff in less than a second,’ says the Oxford-trained Berners-Lee, 37, whose mind so races he often leaves sentences unfinished. ‘I’m really interested in getting this into grade schools,’ he says.”
Biography:Tim Berners-Lee of CERN first released his revolutionary World-Wide Web for initial use in 1991 and with it shared his invention HTML (hypertext mark-up language). He later served as director of W3 Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations whose goal was to find ways to help the Web reach its full potential. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Associated Press
Title, headline, chapter name: Wiring the Planet. Part 2
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.w3.org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/SanFranciscoExaminer/930531.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney