The Web: Vague, But Exciting

The First Analysis Of The Web: Vague, But Exciting

from the true,-that dept

It's pretty common knowledge that Tim Berners-Lee is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, which we all know and love today. However, if you haven't ever done so, it's actually quite fun to read through his original proposal for the web, as a new way for managing information. Here's a snippet:

In providing a system for manipulating this sort of information, the hope would be to allow a pool of information to develop which could grow and evolve with the organisation and the projects it describes. For this to be possible, the method of storage must not place its own restraints on the information. This is why a "web" of notes with links (like references) between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system. When describing a complex system, many people resort to diagrams with circles and arrows. Circles and arrows leave one free to describe the interrelationships between things in a way that tables, for example, do not. The system we need is like a diagram of circles and arrows, where circles and arrows can stand for anything. /.../