Tim Berners Lee Quotes (45 Quotes)


    But querying a database that gets linked so as to query the whole planet is very exciting.

    Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.

    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.

    Any good software engineer will tell you that a compiler and an interpreter are interchangeable.

    Software companies should take more responsibility for security holes, especially in browsers and e-mail clients. There are some straightforward things the industry should be doing right now to fix things, and I don't know why they haven't been done yet.


    The Domain Name Server (DNS) is the Achilles heel of the Web. The important thing is that it's managed responsibly.

    Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.

    Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.

    Web pages are designed for people. For the Semantic Web, we need to look at existing databases.

    Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.

    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.

    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.

    The important thing is the diversity available on the Web.

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

    Whatever the device you use for getting your information out, it should be the same information.

    Everybody who runs a Web site knows we're not assured of compatibility, and we could end up with a split.

    If HTML and the Web made all the online documents look like one huge book, the Semantic Web will make all the data in the world look like one huge database.

    Physicists analyze systems. Web scientists, however, can create the systems.

    IT professionals have a responsibility to understand the use of standards and the importance of making Web applications that work with any kind of device.

    We shouldn't build a technology to colour, or grey out, what people say. The media in general is balanced, although there are a lot of issues to be addressed that the media rightly pick up on.

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

    We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.

    We need diversity of thought in the world to face the new challenges.

    The Mobile Web Initiative is important - information must be made seamlessly available on any device.

    The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.

    Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here: private ownership vs. open source, and so on.

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

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


    The original idea of the Web was about supporting the way people already work socially, but this doesn't happen with a lot of IT projects.

    The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.

    If you use the original World Wide Web program, you never see a URL or have to deal with HTML. That was a surprise to me - that people were prepared to painstakingly write HTML.

    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.

    On the Web, you can allow people to talk to each other, but you have to guarantee that they know who's going to have access to the conversation.

    The recommended strategy is to employ 'smart' buying practices to reduce acquisition and support costs, including software asset management, and increase the use of standards-compliant software,'

    When it comes to professionalism, it makes sense to talk about being professional in IT. Standards are vital so that IT professionals can provide systems that last.

    There could still be a huge battle which leaves a big mess and fragments the Web into two pieces whenever a new feature comes along.


    People think e-commerce is just people browsing, but there's more to it than that. More and more people are using programs and agents to shop for the best deal, and that's how they're going to be getting to your site.

    Sites need to be able to interact in one single, universal space.

    The Web is now philosophical engineering. Physics and the Web are both about the relationship between the small and the large.

    The Google algorithm was a significant development. I've had thank-you emails from people whose lives have been saved by information on a medical website or who have found the love of their life on a dating website.

    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.

    I think IT projects are about supporting social systems-about communications between people and machines. They tend to fail due to cultural issues.

    Microsoft said recently that nearly 50 percent of people need to make some sort of adjustment to their system to interact with it.


    More Tim Berners-Lee Quotations (Based on Topics)


    People - Tim Berners Lee Quotes on World - Computers & Technology - Progress - Astronomy & Cosmology - Physics - Dreams - Tim Berners Lee Quotes on Mind - Tim Berners Lee Quotes on Thought & Thinking - Bureaucracy - Management - Space - Imagination & Visualization - Relationship - Future - Duty - Dating - Past - Time - View All Tim Berners-Lee Quotations

    Related Authors


    Thomas A. Edison - Wilbur Wright - Walter Chrysler - Tim Berners Lee - Samuel Morse - Jeff Hawkins - George Westinghouse - George Eastman - Elisha Gray - Alexander Graham Bell


Authors (by First Name)

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

Other Inspiring Sections