(Weitergel.) Tim Berners-Lee at the IEE (RealAudio)

[Ralf Schimmer <SCHIMMER _at__ mail.sub.uni-goettingen.de>]

Liebe Liste,

ein Vortrag von Tim Berners-Lee, dem Erfinder des WWW, ueber die 
moegliche Entwicklung des Internet ist gewiss immer von Interesse. 
Und da ich auch in diesem Kreise einige Interessenten vermute, leite 
ich diese Nachricht gerne mit freundlichen Gruessen aus dem 
regnerischen Goettingen weiter.

R.S. 

------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht folgt -------

Members of this list may wish to take the opportunity to hear Dr Tim
Berners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, speaking at the 
Institution of Electrical Engineers, Savoy Place, London, on the 
recent occasion of his presentation with three prizes: The 1996 
Mountbatten Medal, which is given by the National Electronics Council 
for an outstanding contribution in electronics or information 
technology; The 1997 Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran prize, which is given by 
the Foundation for Science and Technology for the application of 
science and technology for the benefit of society; and Honorary 
Fellowship of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, which is given 
to distinguished workers in engineering and technology.

Following the presentations, Dr Berners-Lee gave a capacity audience 
his thoughts on 'Whither the World Wide Web?' Not so much a view of 
where things were going, as he explained in his opening remarks, and 
more of where he would like them to go. The Web started with some 
very ambitious objectives. The aim was the creation of a common, 
collaborative information space where hypertext links would help 
capture the 'rationale of what was going on'. By running exciting 
programs over this information space, we would then be able to 
identify all the key interactions, allowing machines to help us to 
manage. This dream is clearly some way off. For the present, the Web 
is still insufficiently interactive, the user interface needs to be 
more intuitive and, most critical of all, there needs to be a common 
language - a metadata language - for describing the content of Web 
pages. The W3C is currently engaged in a strong drive for the 
definition of such a language. The problem that has stymied such 
efforts in the past has been the need for people to agree on how to 
define objects. The answer, according to Dr Berners-Lee, is to follow 
the evolutionary approach adopted with HTML, an approach which can 
cope with as-yet-undefined page objects.

Dr Berners-Lee concluded by reviewing some of the social implications 
of the Web. Here the objective is to ensure the 'integrity of this 
information space', doing for the content of the Web what the wider 
Internet community have done for the strength of the infrastructure 
that makes the Web possible. 'Our job', he said, 'is to make sure 
that this is done very very solidly and with great integrity'.

Dr Berners-Lee's lecture is available as a RealAudio recording in the 
IEE's interactive magazine The Computer Forum 
(http://forum.iee.org.uk/), which is published for members of the 
IEE's Informatics Division and for all professionals working with 
computer-based systems. New users will need to complete the 
registration form for access.

Dr Tim Berners-Lee is currently based at MIT's Laboratory of Computer 
Science, as Director of the not-for-profit World Wide Web Consortium 
(W3C). With teams in INRIA (France), Keio University (Japan) and MIT, 
the W3C is directed at realising the full potential of the Web 
through the promotion of an open standardisation process. 


David Rossall
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Project Manager, The Computer Forum
IEE Publishing and Information Services
Tel:    +44 (0)1438 767249      Fax: +44 (0)1438 742840
E-mail: drossall _at__ iee.org.uk     Web: http://forum.iee.org.uk/
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"Oh what a tangled Web we weave, when first we practise to 
retrieve"
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