CERN’s Sir Tim Berners-Lee, father of the world wide web, has been honoured again, this time being named Greatest Briton 2004. Definitely a worthy recipient of the 25,000 pounds prize!
But, look at what his hyperlinking idea spawned: a more than a decade-long information revolution from Amazon to the Zoological Department of the University of Zanzibar. Interestingly, TBL never envisaged the Web evolving in the way it did. His original concept was more akin to the interactive blogs and wikis that have sprung up in that last couple of years, where visitors to a page can contribute to and edit pages and add links to other pertinent pages. I’m sure he would have kept the whole thing to himself if he could have foreseen the dot.com hype and the bursting stockmarket bubble of the 1990s.
But, where would we be without his little webby baby? Probably getting a lot more fresh air and exercise, I’d say.