The Internet is what it is today for a large part due to the fact that its inventor strove from the beginning for an accessible platform. He could have made billions or have had the intention to. Would it have led to the same success? No one may be certain but what’s for sure is that instead he decided to fight for a solution free from the intellectual property locks.

This book is a life account, the one of Tim Berners-Lee. It’s about his endeavor to open the door to a new age of creativity, how he had to fight for it, the first killer apps, the global issues it raised over time and much more.

Wenn ich ein neues Zeitalter menschlicher Kreativität ermöglichen wollte, musste ich mein System leichter zugänglich machen. “Es ist nicht nur für Wissenschaftler, nicht nur für Akademiker, sagte ich mir. This Is for Everyone.”

Talking about killer apps, I got to learn that the very first one was actually a phone book. A CRUD! Shortly later, at the first WWW Conference in 1994, another one would be showcased: Map Server. It won the Best of the Web Award in the category Most Technical Merit and was basically a Google Maps precursor.

The vision Sir Berners-Lee fought for led to extraordinary results. What anyone considers normal today, like walking around with a constant connection to the Web in their pocket, is mindblowing and rests on pillars that I find so interesting: telecommunication protocols, software layers, web browsers, web standards.

“Das Schöne daran war der Browser - man konnte sehen, was andere Leute gemacht hatten. Die Webmaster lernten voneinander, indem sie sich den HTML-Code von anderen ansahen. Es ist eines der besten Beispiele dafür, warum Open Source ein so mächtiges Tool ist.”

Since its creation, the World Wide Web made possible some horrible stuff. It’s not all rosy and the book reveals how Tim Berners-Lee intended all the time to counter any nocive effects. That goes for the technical aspects, but over time, the political one took a large part too as this technology reached a global scale. As for the technological side of things, it’s interesting to link to his W3C personal notes.

Ich möchte, dass die Menschen das Internet optimistisch sehen. Ich möchte, dass sie es mit Freude nutzen! In der Anfangszeit des Web waren Freude und begeistertes Staunen allgegenwärtig - doch heute erzeugt das Online-Leben eher Unbehagen als Vergnügen. Ich hoffe, dass wir diese Freude wiedergewinnen können, indem wir Menschen von algorithmisch erzeugter Sucht wegführen.

That’s a reality we face. I must leave [my work] behind for the man coming after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or foolish?.

I enjoyed this book a lot and would recommend it to any technophile.