Despite being the frontrunner, Tim Berners-Lee is admirably modest.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Who is the greatest living Englishman? It would be hard to argue against the merits of Tim Berners-Lee, the sole begetter and inventor of the world wide web, an organism whose initials, www, have (in some languages, including our own) three times more syllables than the phrase they’re abbreviating, which is perhaps the only flaw in Berners-Lee’s grand design.
The story of how he devised the hypertext transfer protocol (http) and the entire language and structure of the web on a Steve Jobs NeXt computer at Cern in Switzerland in 1990 has passed into legend, though I would certainly recommend reading his own excellent and highly readable account, Weaving The Web. Sir Tim remains an idealist, passionately committed to an open, free and wholly public web as he guides the W3 Consortium towards an unknown future from his base at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Incidentally, that flaw… the unwieldy name and initials, www, came about as a result of the inventor’s extraordinary and entirely endearing modesty. Originally he had come up with the name The Information Mine, but he found the initials, TIM, embarrassing. No less egocentric (especially in French-speaking Switzerland, where he was working) was another thought, the Mine Of Information, so he settled on good old www.
I had the privilege of meeting the great man recently and he showed me the browser equivalent he is working on at MIT for the new Semantic Web (another time, another article perhaps) – an application called The Tabulator. He had failed to notice that his full initials feature prominently in TaBuLator and it was perhaps wrong of me to point it out, but the squirms of self-deprecation were marvellous to watch. This is a man who could have taken a hundredth of a cent for every commercial transaction for just five years and been rich beyond computation, he could have linked himself with corporations, put his name about in public, branded himself and offered his opinions on everything and everyone. Instead, he chooses quietly to work on ways to ensure a future web of even greater openness and neutrality in scientific, intellectual and political exchange. He is what my grandfather would have called a real mensch.
I remember trying to persuade the then deputy director general of the BBC, John Birt, that the BBC should get hold of the domain bbc.com for web and email purposes. He had no idea, and I don’t blame him, what I was talking about. This was about 1993 and only sad acts like me had heard of the internet. About six months later, however, it was too late and bbc.com had been snapped up by a cable-winding company somewhere and so the ill-fated beeb.com and the good old bbc.co.uk were acquired. Actually, bbc.com now redirects one’s browser to the mother page (how much did the corporation have to pay for that, one wonders?) which brings me to the gripe with which I will leave you.
How come we British are just about the only nation on earth who have to make the tedious and entirely unnecessary three extra keystrokes every time we type a URL? I could be stephen.fr in France, stephen.za in South Africa, stephen.ru in Russia, stephen.nl in Holland, etc, etc, but here? Oh no, it’s stephen dot co dot bloody uk. How annoying is that?
All right, not very in the great scheme of things, but nonetheless, who was responsible for getting us trapped into it? Did they think the nation was getting an extra fancy couple of initials which would lend a commercial gravitas that might be equivalent to America’s .com? Well, they were deluding themselves if that’s what they believed. All they got was the puzzled contempt of other nations. Let’s fight for a pure .uk, I say. The BBC can lead the way by becoming bbc.com now that they’ve finally bought the domain.
This could be the campaign that finally unites our apparently fractured and broken society. Hurrah.uk letitbeso.uk.
Actually, .com is not american.
You might get that impresssion though, because the suffix for the US, .us, is hardly ever used, except perhaps by del.icio.us, and most american sites use .com for the US version of their site instead of .us.
The US have nabbed .gov and .mil for government and military sites, but all others – like .com, .edu and .org – are not country-specific.
I blame the UK academics. Like the inhabitants of Blefuscu, now forgotten, they preached the virtues of the big-endian domains and insisted that my email address was cliff@UK.CO.DEMON. There was no automatic routeing of subdomains either. I remember clearly having to make each day’s new UK.CO.DEMON domains available to a sysadmin in Manchester who had to get them onto his system before the overnight batch run so that JANET users and Internet users could mail each other.
If the only legacy we have left from those days is a two-layer Top Level Domain system, maybe we should consider ourselves lucky.
Adam Rakunas – you got there first. lexid523 must hang out with Neil Gaiman (via whose blog I came first to know Stephen’s blog, although it’s been discussed elsewhere as well). I’d try to insert links but I’m not 100% sure of the syntax within a comment box.
I was a also sad act back in 1988 when the Internet was e-mail and newsgroups (but hope that one has changed like the other now). Unfortunately, I was also a student and dirt-poor, so beyond the “wow” factor in 1993 of showing a parrot photo to my boss after ordering antibodies from the DSHB (oh, what the hell, here it is: http://dshb.biology.uiowa.edu/) and performing my first navigation with Mosaic for Macintosh I was certainly in no position to be investing in domain names. Or Endnote, either, to my regret.
At least I have the moral satisfaction of having recognized a good thing at the time. Priceless.
Miles – the guy was Brandon Butterworth. He wrote a potted history of the early years of Internet Services in the BBC here:
http://support.bbc.co.uk/support/history.html
There ia also a bit about him in one of the current posts on the BBC Intenet blog:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/12/revolution_not_evolution.html
And yes you’re right – never underestimate the boffins at Kingswood!
On the issue of “www” (which you could pronounce as wuh wuh wuh) it’s original intention was to distinguish web servers from FTP/mail/etc. See:
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/www.html
There is a very simple line you can insert in the config file on a server to point both XYZ.com and http://www.XYZ.com to the one source (but of course you know this already as your domain does exactly this!) and thus have both resolve to the same location.
It’s still on the BBC site as well, as it should be – I love the period detail and wish that (a) we kept everything and (b) we still had web credits.
(I’ve been nuts-deep in this stuff for the last while, celebrating bbc.co.uk’s tenth birthday.)
Or one could just say “world wide web dot” etc etc.
I’ve always admired Tim Berners-Lee, but how strange it is to realize that I have that man to thank for my boyfriend – we met online.
Here in New Zealand we use the .something.nz process as well. However, we not only have .co and .net but also .maori.nz and my favourite, .geek.nz.
One of the other options, .org.nz, can lead to interesting domain names. My (former) brother in law has registered vital.org.nz. No word yet on whether sexual.org.nz has been acquired (and no, I’m not typing it into Firefox, I’m at work!).
I’m not too keen on .co.uk either. Also, I’ve seen Japanese sites with the .co.jp domain.
Hm may I add that I love that guy spinning around BBC election 97 site?
))
although were I live for example political parties have a tendency of being so obtuse they probably still have the little spinning guy
another ahem prominent politician didnt know what youtube was… isnt it lovely to know how forward thinking they are?
Ok boys dont mind me carry on the discussion
Will somebody be crass enough to say the words World Wide Wank?
Yes.
Sadly for John Birt,
http://www.dalek.co.uk
has gone as well now . . .
Sorry I have to be the one…
the extensions in south africa are .co.za, or .org.za etc… never .za
Thanks for great pieces, I’ve been a foxafficianado for 6 yrs and you taught me some tricks
weresocolonial.co.nz
Funny how New Zealand follows the UK in using co and Australia does the American thing with com.
Is it “Sydney Harbor” or “Sydney Harbour”?
One of the things that I like so much about your articles is the enthusiasm that exudes from every column inch. I have no doubt that you are hectically busy and perhaps your only sanctuary is the ‘loon’, and you probably don’t have time for glaikit commenters such as myself, however I come away from reading these blessays/blisquisitions/blitherances with a little more knowledge and even more inspiration to further that knowledge.
And so it was with this post. However, I was surprised to see that the book ‘Weaving The Web’ written by Tim Berners Lee that you recommended was only available second hand from Amazon. I found that to be rather sad. It seems that the last publication date was 2000 and there are no new editions to be had.
Now, I love books in whatever form they take, so a second hand version is fine for me, perhaps even better since I am doing my part in recycling paper. But what a disgrace that whilst the invention is a the equivalent of a mega blockbuster a million times over, relatively few people wish to read and learn how it came into being. I would rather read about Tim Berners Lee or similar any day (or night as it usually is) than Da Linguine Code or whatever that book was called.
Thank you so much for the article and the book recommendation even if it is proving difficult to get hold of.
great blog with some great content. just a correction though, our TLDs here in South Africa are actually .co.za.
just be grateful you don’t have a Cook Islands TLD – http://www.stephenfry.co.ck
The mess gets bigger when you go international, but it can occasionally deliver rather funny results. Here’s what happens when marketing meets tech.
Marketing: “We would like to register our name globally, but our divisions must have their country in local lingo”.
Tech: “So, companydeutschland, companynederland, companyfrance, like that?”
Marketing: “Exactly! Glad you got it in one.”
Tech: “You are really sure about that, we can just go ahead? It will take a while so I want you to be sure. Best confirm by email.”
Marketing: “Sure, sure, wait.. There, I’ve sent you the email.”
I leave you for a moment to consider what happened next, with the vital clues that the company name was Powergen and the problem country (I am willing to bet the tech guys spotted this within seconds, hence the confirmation question) was Italy.
In case you don’t believe me this really happened, here’s the formal WHOIS (which will give you the answer as well):
Domain name: POWERGENITALIA.COM
Administrative Contact:
Powergen Srl, Powergen Srl borri@elledi.it
Via XXV Aprile ,5
Chiusi della Verna, AR 52010
IT
+39.0575-531015 Fax: +39.0575-511891
Ah – tech humour. Understood by a few, but oh so unassailable when it strikes..
[...] Stephen Fry » “Is this the greatest living Englishman?” Stephen Fry takes a look at Tim Berners Lee who he thinks is the greatest living Enlishman. In the process he criticizes the UK TLDs. (tags: blog bbc haveread stephenfry timbernerslee) [...]
Here in South Africa we also need to type .co.za, possibly because a large part of our population believes we are still under British rule.
Selma.. Sydney Harbour.
Didn’t a pacific island nation make a mint out of registering a particular [desired] domain name set and then either ‘leasing’ it or selling it? The anecdote is floating around the back of my mind but I can’t bring it into focus. Anyone heard this?
Susan P: That was Tuvalu with the TLD .tv, attractive for obvious reasons.
I wonder how the Millennium Technology Prize and Tim B-L receiving it in 2004 was covered in the media in the UK? Anyway, I think it went to the right person.
http://www.millenniumprize.fi/index.php?m=2&s=1&id=16&sm=4
We need more noble people like Tim Berners-Lee, people who use both their heads and their hearts.:-)
Hmm…I kind of thought the dot com dot (insert country code here) was fairly normal. It seems I need to get out more often, virtually speaking. Here in the Philippines, we still use .com.ph for our URLs (unless the site belongs to a government office, educational institution or non-government organization, where the “com” is exchanged for .gov, .edu, and .org respectively).
Anyway, what’s always made me wonder about the .co.uk is the “co” instead of “com”. Could anyone out there tell me?:-D Thanks.
[...] News continues downhill (6) By Polonius When I had occasion to chastise Stephen Fry about the silly modern habit of using “more than” to mean “as many as” (or, [...]