Quotes by Tim Berners-Lee

About Tim Berners-Lee:

Sir Timothy John is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989, and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid-November of that same year.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

What I do has to be a function of what I can do, not a function of what people ask me to do.

Tim Berners-Lee

One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't.

Tim Berners-Lee

It's interesting that people throughout the existence of the web have been concerned about monopolies.

Tim Berners-Lee

I basically wrote the code and the specs and documentation for how the client and server talked to each other.

Tim Berners-Lee

That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon.

Tim Berners-Lee

The challenge is to manage the Web in an open way-not too much bureaucracy, not subject to political or commercial pressures. The U.S. should demonstrate that it is prepared to share control with the world.

Tim Berners-Lee

Customers need to be given control of their own data-not being tied into a certain manufacturer so that when there are problems they are always obliged to go back to them.

Tim Berners-Lee

Compared even to the development of the phone or TV, the Web developed very quickly.

Tim Berners-Lee

It was really hard explaining the Web before people just got used to it because they didn't even have words like click and jump and page.

Tim Berners-Lee

If you are not on the web, you will have problems accessing services.

Tim Berners-Lee

The most important thing that was new was the idea of URI-or URL, that any piece of information anywhere should have an identifier, which will allow you to get hold of it.

Tim Berners-Lee

In '93 to '94, every browser had its own flavor of HTML. So it was very difficult to know what you could put in a Web page and reliably have most of your readership see it.

Tim Berners-Lee

On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable.

Tim Berners-Lee

I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they've figured I'm looking at those books.

Tim Berners-Lee

I myself feel that it is very important that my ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached.

Tim Berners-Lee

The Semantic Web isn't inherently complex. The Semantic Web language, at its heart, is very, very simple. It's just about the relationships between things.

Tim Berners-Lee

What is a Web year now, about three months? And when people can browse around, discover new things, and download them fast, when we all have agents - then Web years could slip by before human beings can notice.

Tim Berners-Lee

The important thing is the diversity available on the Web.

Tim Berners-Lee

Most larger companies now see that for the market to grow, Web infrastructure must be royalty-free.

Tim Berners-Lee

I think when you have a lot of jumbled up ideas they come together slowly over a period of several years.

Tim Berners-Lee

I have built a moat around myself, along with ways over that moat so that people can ask questions.

Tim Berners-Lee

Author Bio

  • NameTim Berners-Lee
  • DescriptionBritish computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web
  • AliasesTimBL; Sir Tim Berners-Lee; Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA; Timothy John Berners-Lee; TBL
  • BornJune 8, 1955
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionComputer Scientist; Physicist; Programmer
  • AwardsPrix Ars Electronica; W. Wallace McDowell Award; Eduard-Rhein Technology Award; MacArthur Fellows Program; Japan Prize; Millennium Technology Prize; Quadriga; Charles Stark Draper Prize; Queen Elizabeth Prize For Engineering; Knight Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Fellow Of The Royal Society; UNESCO Niels Bohr Medal; Royal Medal; Mountbatten Medal; Princess Of Asturias Award - Technical And Scientific Research; EFF Pioneer Award