Keywords
Citation
Andrew, A.M. (1998), "Tim Berners-Lee", Kybernetes, Vol. 27 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1998.06727hag.002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1998, MCB UP Limited
Tim Berners-Lee
Keywords Cybernetics, Internet, Systems
Tim Berners-Lee
A recent issue of the Computer Bulletin reports an interview (Riley, 1998) with Tim Berners-Lee, the originator of the World Wide Web. He began the WWW, or its forerunner, in 1989 as a means of allowing easy exchange of information within CERN, the European nuclear research centre. He continues to be active in guiding the development of the Web, as a member of the World Wide Web consortium.
The consortium was set up in 1994 to define standards and so to avoid fragmentation of the Web by the appearance of a multiplicity of browsers using differing conventions. A UK contact e-mail address for the consortium is given as w3c-ral@inf.rl.ac.uk
In the interview, Tim Berners-Lee paints a picture of future developments as he sees them, including forms of interaction that are more natural, or organic, than those in use at present, where, for example, the user is frequently required to think of a suitably evocative file-name. It is argued that the system should be able to take care of such details. This is only possible when the basic messages are supplemented by metadata, which could, for example, indicate areas of interest of the message content, its degree of interest or importance, and such things as reliability and confidentiality.
At a relatively simple level, a form of metadata is essential for financial transactions. It is visualised also as playing a part in efficient organisation of the web structure, so as, for example, to prepare for high traffic density for a significant communication. Metadata is also important in allowing personal censoring of unsuitable material, and in overcoming the difficulties due to imprecise addressing information.
Metadata is seen as operating recursively, expressed in the interview by saying that "metadata will have its own metadata". Although the connection is not made in the interview, there is a correspondence with theories of brain functioning, in particular McCulloch's "redundancy of potential command". This supports the idea that the net may be evolving towards a distributed super-intelligence, a thought that is at the same time both intriguing and alarming.
ReferenceRiley, J. (1998), "Tim Berners-Lee", Computer Bulletin, January, pp. 16-17.
Alex M. Andrew