Inventor of the Internet visits Uganda
HE is among the 100 most influential people in the world. That did not make him a visible VIP at first sight. In the corridors of Sheraton Hotel, he strolled around unnoticed. Even anticipating journalists and dignitaries seemed oblivious of the man they
By Arthur Baguma
HE is among the 100 most influential people in the world. That did not make him a visible VIP at first sight. In the corridors of Sheraton Hotel, he strolled around unnoticed. Even anticipating journalists and dignitaries seemed oblivious of the man they were waiting for — in their midst.
When John Nagenda, the senior presidential adviser on media, introduced the man who was seated on his right as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web (www), it suddenly occurred to many that the man they were eagerly waiting to see was in their midst.
Dressed in a blue shirt and a matching black jacket, Berners sits with barely any piece of paper in front of him, save for his phone. Like most geniuses, all he needed to discuss the intricacies of www technology was his head. But if he expected a warm welcome and praises for his genius — it was not to come from the journalists. Even when the entire world relatively agrees that probably without Sir Tim Berners we may never have the web; the first question one of the journalists asked him was intriguing. “Do you think if you had not invented the world wide web someone else would have done it?†With a smile, he calmly responded: “You can never know.â€
Berners was in Uganda on behalf of the web Foundation, to bring the benefits of the Web to more people around the world.
He deliberated with people, projects and organisations on how the web is currently being used to spur development. Only 20% of the world population use the web. So the questions he wants answered are: Why are the 80% not using the web? What could be the cause and what can be done to ensure that they also benefit from using the web. Majority of the people who cannot access the web are in the third world countries.
Eng. Nelson Gagawala, the state minister for trade and industry echoed his words saying the web can save Africans from being slaves of poverty. “With the web, new ways of providing information to people to bridge the communication gap will come up. The web’s ability to accelerate economic development and inspire innovation in countries like Uganda is tremendous.†Gagawala noted.
Berners could potentially have become as rich and powerful as Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder. Instead, he chose not to copyright his invention in 1990 making it free for all. Berners works for an academics’ salary at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and until recently, he drove a 20-year-old Volkswagen.
Fourteen years after Bernes received a £40,000 grant from a Swiss research centre to develop his idea to allow sharing of information through the network of cabling and computers, he was knighted by the Queen.
He is also a member of the Order of Merit, which was founded in 1902 by Edward VII, as a special mark of honour for people who have made outstanding achievements in their field.
Born in 1955 in a family of four, Bernes was raised in East Sheen, southwest London. Young Berners-Lee occupied himself by building computers out of cardboard.
Time magazine named him as one of the 100 greatest thinkers of the 20th Century. He studied Physics at Oxford and is married to Nancy Carlson, who is a computer programmer.
Berners graduated from the Queens College at Oxford University in 1976, where he built his first computer and an old television. He spent two years with Plessey Telecommunications Ltd, a UK telecom equipment manufacturer.
In 1978, Berners joined D.G Nash Ltd in the UK, where he wrote about typesetting software for intelligent printers, and a multitasking operating system.
He also worked at John Poole’s Image Computer Systems Ltd, with technical design responsibility. He then took up a fellowship at European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), to work on distributed real-time systems for scientific data acquisition and system control. Bernes also worked on FASTBUS system software and designed a heterogeneous remote procedure call system.
In 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the www. Based on the earlier “Enquire†work, it was designed to allow people work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. He wrote the first server, “httpdâ€, and the first client, “www†a what-you-see-is-what-you-get hypertext browser.
This work was started in October 1990, and the programme “www†was first made available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991. Berner continued working on the design of the Web, coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His initial specifications of URLs, HTTP and HTML were refined and discussed in larger circles as the web technology spread.
In 1999, he became the first holder of the 3Com Founders chair. He is director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which coordinates web development worldwide.
The consortium takes leading the Web to its full potential, ensuring its stability through rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations of its usage.
HE is among the 100 most influential people in the world. That did not make him a visible VIP at first sight. In the corridors of Sheraton Hotel, he strolled around unnoticed. Even anticipating journalists and dignitaries seemed oblivious of the man they were waiting for — in their midst.
When John Nagenda, the senior presidential adviser on media, introduced the man who was seated on his right as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web (www), it suddenly occurred to many that the man they were eagerly waiting to see was in their midst.
Dressed in a blue shirt and a matching black jacket, Berners sits with barely any piece of paper in front of him, save for his phone. Like most geniuses, all he needed to discuss the intricacies of www technology was his head. But if he expected a warm welcome and praises for his genius — it was not to come from the journalists. Even when the entire world relatively agrees that probably without Sir Tim Berners we may never have the web; the first question one of the journalists asked him was intriguing. “Do you think if you had not invented the world wide web someone else would have done it?†With a smile, he calmly responded: “You can never know.â€
Berners was in Uganda on behalf of the web Foundation, to bring the benefits of the Web to more people around the world.
He deliberated with people, projects and organisations on how the web is currently being used to spur development. Only 20% of the world population use the web. So the questions he wants answered are: Why are the 80% not using the web? What could be the cause and what can be done to ensure that they also benefit from using the web. Majority of the people who cannot access the web are in the third world countries.
Eng. Nelson Gagawala, the state minister for trade and industry echoed his words saying the web can save Africans from being slaves of poverty. “With the web, new ways of providing information to people to bridge the communication gap will come up. The web’s ability to accelerate economic development and inspire innovation in countries like Uganda is tremendous.†Gagawala noted.
Berners could potentially have become as rich and powerful as Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder. Instead, he chose not to copyright his invention in 1990 making it free for all. Berners works for an academics’ salary at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and until recently, he drove a 20-year-old Volkswagen.
Fourteen years after Bernes received a £40,000 grant from a Swiss research centre to develop his idea to allow sharing of information through the network of cabling and computers, he was knighted by the Queen.
He is also a member of the Order of Merit, which was founded in 1902 by Edward VII, as a special mark of honour for people who have made outstanding achievements in their field.
Born in 1955 in a family of four, Bernes was raised in East Sheen, southwest London. Young Berners-Lee occupied himself by building computers out of cardboard.
Time magazine named him as one of the 100 greatest thinkers of the 20th Century. He studied Physics at Oxford and is married to Nancy Carlson, who is a computer programmer.
Berners graduated from the Queens College at Oxford University in 1976, where he built his first computer and an old television. He spent two years with Plessey Telecommunications Ltd, a UK telecom equipment manufacturer.
In 1978, Berners joined D.G Nash Ltd in the UK, where he wrote about typesetting software for intelligent printers, and a multitasking operating system.
He also worked at John Poole’s Image Computer Systems Ltd, with technical design responsibility. He then took up a fellowship at European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), to work on distributed real-time systems for scientific data acquisition and system control. Bernes also worked on FASTBUS system software and designed a heterogeneous remote procedure call system.
In 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the www. Based on the earlier “Enquire†work, it was designed to allow people work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. He wrote the first server, “httpdâ€, and the first client, “www†a what-you-see-is-what-you-get hypertext browser.
This work was started in October 1990, and the programme “www†was first made available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991. Berner continued working on the design of the Web, coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His initial specifications of URLs, HTTP and HTML were refined and discussed in larger circles as the web technology spread.
In 1999, he became the first holder of the 3Com Founders chair. He is director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which coordinates web development worldwide.
The consortium takes leading the Web to its full potential, ensuring its stability through rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations of its usage.