Rating: 
Summary: Such a nice guy
Review: "Weaving the Web" gives the overwhelming impression that Tim Berners-Lee is basically a Regular Guy who was in exactly the right place at the right time. He comes across as a relentlessly enlightened person, beneficent toward all, earnest to the point of humorlessness.The book tells the story of the past and present of the Web, and Berners-Lee's ideas about the future, at a very high level. It's not a Techie's History of the Web; there are a few annoying technical gaffes, and not much about the bits and bytes. I was surprised to read some non-technical reviewers opine that it was *too* technical. No pleasing everyone, I guess! I'm not convinced by Berners-Lee's idea that, if only we hook everything together well enough, we will then be able to make computers that understand, that reason, that figure stuff out for us. I think the hooking-together is the easy part, and we'll still be far from real understanding. On the other hand, maybe I would have been a skeptic back in 1989, too, when he was telling people about this crazy thing called the World Wide Web... *8)
Rating:
Summary: Such a nice guy
Review: "Weaving the Web" gives the overwhelming impression that Tim Berners-Lee is basically a Regular Guy who was in exactly the right place at the right time. He comes across as a relentlessly enlightened person, beneficent toward all, earnest to the point of humorlessness. The book tells the story of the past and present of the Web, and Berners-Lee's ideas about the future, at a very high level. It's not a Techie's History of the Web; there are a few annoying technical gaffes, and not much about the bits and bytes. I was surprised to read some non-technical reviewers opine that it was *too* technical. No pleasing everyone, I guess! I'm not convinced by Berners-Lee's idea that, if only we hook everything together well enough, we will then be able to make computers that understand, that reason, that figure stuff out for us. I think the hooking-together is the easy part, and we'll still be far from real understanding. On the other hand, maybe I would have been a skeptic back in 1989, too, when he was telling people about this crazy thing called the World Wide Web... *8)
Rating:
Summary: Really interesting, but lacks TCP/IP background information
Review: A most interesting history/sociology of the Web, the book is well written and very accessible if a little "chatty". For the serious minded it gives us acronyms and directions to watch out for. I feel there are a couple of gaps. I would have welcomed more on the TCP/IP protocol stack, how this foundation was established, how secure it is, and likely future directions plus implications for the Web. I also feel the author skipped over the period in Spring 1995 when ISPs' ability to dynamically allocate dot addresses opened up the Web to those of us who were mystified by the TCP/IP stack. This appeared to lead to the explosive success of the Web among ordinary folk.
Rating: 
Summary: Unputdownable, but where's the hypertext version?
Review: After browsing umpteen "History of the web" pages, its refreshing to get it from the man himself. Primarily, this book is a personal statement, and should be evaluated as one.It has the flavour of a travelogue with the descriptions of the bylanes and their interesting denizens who put in their mite to make this journey happen.However, it doesnt seem to be written with the intention to "attract"; its more of a "how and why i did this" type.As such, it falls outside the "Inventing the Web for dummies" class, which probably explains the lack of pictures, cute icons and sidebars (There is however, a graph on the cover which i'd love to look at fully!).Throughout the book runs a chain(web?) of incidents and decisions that are easily construed as examples of modesty, altrusim and general magnanimity on TBL's part (eg, not wanting to name the web as TIM,happiness at the web protocols being made public, tolerance of big companys' ideas of total control,etc) but (which I suspect) are only a result of common sense reasoning to get the whole thing going the way he wanted it to. I suppose the only way you could "own" the web was to give it away! Also refreshing is the lack of derison for the commercial side of the web. For a book with such an inward perspective, however, it holds a lot for every reader.The everyday web buff now knows how it happened - blow by blow.The corporate reader now has something to glean a success story from and a starting point to tommorow's web technologies - which is enough justification for promoting this book as something more than just desktop decoration and board meeting small talk. The programmer (IMHO) is the person to benefit the most , however. The book reads like trace of some meandering execution thread which TBL has (finally) documented. Now we know how it worked.And why. We also now know that "view source" was something that shouldnt have been.Also that "put" should have been right there with "get".And the link to the future -the chapters on the "Semantic web"- seem to be just the next iteration of what is now the web. While OMG and others talk of creating the object web , here is TBL plotting to achieve that and more with his seemingly simple ideas.Of course, all this is not in the book. Its on the w3c site. Which is suspect is where the rest of this book is - in bits and pieces. Or chunks of information if you will, linked inexhorably to each other. Which is why i'm looking for the hypertext version of this book. An aside on some other reviews: 1]ironically, joncolis@yahoo.com is able to comment on this book *thro the web*. 2]i was about to rush to point out to him that TBL could have probably made a lot more money with his idea by starting a company (or some such "control organization") than writing a book about it, but then probably the web wouldnt be what it is if it were run in that way.
Rating:
Summary: Like Having a Chat with Gutenberg
Review: Berners-Lee has created something so universal that 50 years from now we won't even remember it had an inventor. Who can remember the inventor of television or radio? The goodness of the man shines through. He wants to make the world a better place and he has already. He has a pespective on it all, placing the birth of his first child above his amazing technical achievement. This book is a good read, for those of us who used Mosaic and those who never heard of Windows 3.1. I would compare Berners-Lee to Gandhi, who achieved more through forceful ideas than by brute intimidation. The greatest idea is the openness of HTML. Read and learn why this works where other new ideas have failed. Brian Black
Rating: 
Summary: Delusions of grandeur
Review: Despite this man's claim's, he did not create the web as we know it. The web originated as a resource in which scientists could share information over vast distances--much more efficient than standard mail. HTTP evolved from a working group that hammered out the details and finally agreed on a standard. Thus the Protocol in httP. This book is a money-making scheme.
Rating: 
Summary: How to make an important achievement sound dull
Review: Everywhere you go to day it is www this and dot com that. Tim Berners-Lee needs to be heartily congratualted for having the vision and persistence that has resulted in what we have today and where we will all be going tomorrow. Then why has he produced such a disappointing work? The way he describes his early days developing his enquire programme and then his move onto HTML should be enthralling, a story we should want to be telling our grandchildren, but he never stays in one place long enough and he is very dismissive of key events (such as Andreeson's development of mosaic, and the birth of Netscape). Nevertheless, I now understand a little more about XML, PKC and the 4 horizontal levels of the web's infrastructure and I have a much clearer picture of where Berners-Lee wanted to go with the web, and that is my biggest issue with this work. Berners-Lee's parents were mathematicians and he is a phyicist. What an orderly world he must be trying to live in. One where the interconnection provided by the web will lead to us all opening up to each other and sharing knowledge. No, the real world is full of bias, inconsistency and greed and no amount of connectivity is going to change that. His thoughts about a semantic web are visionary, machine interpretable data and heuristic searches will certainly mean that finding knowledge will be easier, but for whom? The powerful, or the powerless? I think he has spent too much time with his friend Micheal Dertouzos - who also put in some humanistic, semi-religious nonsense at the end of his marvellous book "What will be". All I can say to both of them is: "You are infinitely more intelligent than most of us will ever be. Please use that intelligence to develop technology and not to dabble in sociology." If you have read Kurzweil's book on "Spiritual Machines", you may have noticed a chilling similarity. If intelligence is all life is about and the fight against entropy is the absolute meaning of life, instead of humans becoming more machine like in order to increase the level of intelligence in the world (Kurzweil), all they need to do is create an artificial brain where each individual and their PC is a synapse and their links (cable, satellite, whatever) an axon or a dendrite. Now wouldn't that be spooky!
Rating:
Summary: If you build it ....
Review: Excellent review of the history of the Web. The book is most helpful however when looking at Berner-Lees' vision of what the Web can be and why we want to get there.
Rating:
Summary: Internet and the Web
Review: Fantastic man to listen to and read about. It would seem that joncolis@yahoo.com is getting confused with the words "Web" and "Internet".
Rating: 
Summary: An important work - but a snoozer in presentation
Review: I bought this book based on recommendations from colleagues and academics who've referenced it. I accept the importance of the author and his account of developing the web. However, I find the presentation unreadable - despite trying hard, I was never able to drudge through the techno-babble and self-aggrandizing to get to the punchline. Possibly interesting for history buffs and those immersed in the internet, but not particularly useful or revealing for others.
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