Once, while schmoozing at the Boston home of Bob Metcalfe, I ended up sitting beside Tim Berners-Lee (right), the inventor of the World Wide Web, both of us with a cold chicken plate perched on our knee trying to make the kind of awkward small talk that’s likely to occur between a wet-behind-the-ears Canadian reporter and an unbelievably brilliant scientist. The encounter was a significant and seminal one for me but I suspect he’d be hard-pressed to remember the evening, let alone the individuals he chatted with while trying to finish his drumstick.
I’m happy to report though that when I’ve seen him at conferences or read reports by other journalists, my first impressions of him seem to be the correct: He’s not only a really smart guy, he’s also really down-to-earth and witty in a way that reflects his English heritage.
And now the man who invented the Web in 1989, has finally got a blog. (Hat tip to Dr. Weinberger for that news).
From Tim’s first post:
Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space. … it is nice to have a machine to the administrative work of handling the navigation bars and comment buttons and so on, and it is nice to edit in a mode in which you can to [sic] limited damage to the site. So I am going to try this blog thing using blog tools. So this is for all the people who have been saying I ought to have a blog.
Apparently I’m not the only one excited that he’s blogging. Apparently the blogosphere has got so whipped up about the fact that Tim is blogging, Tim has had to turn off the commenting feature on his blog (— but Tim, you only had 455 comments to your first post! —) and put up a polite-but-firm note:
I intend [this blog] to be geeky semantic web stuff mostly. For example, it won't be for W3C questions which should really be addressed to working groups.
So thanks for all the support, no need for more general 'thank you' comments! Thank *you* all.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Mr. Berners-Lee.