Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee - Book Report/Review Example

The book seemingly covers a wide area, ranging from the creation of our familiar acronyms like www and http. In addition, areas like the growing role of software companies, concerns regarding privacy, and censorship all get adequate attention in the book. Thus, the ones who read the book get wide knowledge about the true nature of the Web and learn how to use it to its full potential. Finally, one can see a sincere effort from the part of the scholar to predict the future of the web. In this effort, Berners-Lee does not forget to acknowledge the role of manufacturers, programmers, and various other social organisations in keeping Web as the medium of social change and source of creativity.

As the foreword of the book acknowledges, “Weaving the Web is a unique story about a unique innovation, by a unique inventor” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti vii) The first chapter is devoted to show the reader the unavoidable role of Web in the modern life in various guises, “commerce, research and surfing” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti 2), and it says it is this familiarity that stops us from properly understanding the real nature of the net in “the broadest and deepest sense” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti 2).

The simplicity of the scholar is seen in his openly admitting the fact that “there was no “Eureka” moment…like the legendary apple falling” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti 3). . The chaotic nature the CERN floor was another factor which made the scholar understand the need to develop a weblike linking. However, in the third chapter, the scholar describes how difficult it was to convince the CERN people and hypertext product companies of the exciting prospects of “the marriage of hypertext and the internet” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti 26).

The fourth chapter describes the way the protocols are developed and how they are needed. The most beautiful thing to be observed here is the easiness with which the scholar converts such complex ideas into the common language that people use in their day-to-day life. He says “the art was to define the few basic, common rules of “protocol” that would allow one computer to talk to another” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti 36). In order to make the system comprehensible for the common brain, he adds, “Web is like a market economy…the equivalent of rules for fair trading, on the Web, are the rules about what a URI means as an address, and the language the computers use-HTTP” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti 36).

By the fifth chapter, the scholar spreads the net globally, and it becomes necessary for him to see that people who put up severs are all using “HTTP, HTML and URIs in a consistent way” (Berners-Lee and Fischetti 53). In order to manage this, the scholar starts an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) through which Web’s specifications are prepared and spread. By the time the book reaches the sixth chapter, one can see the spread of browsing as more and more browsers are set up, especially by students and engineers.

Some important figures mentioned are Dave Raggett at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol, and University of Kansas. However, the growth was in a haphazard way, and by the