At the time it was indeed an infernal battle with computers; monotonous tinkering, prone to error and failure. Out of this problem arose a solution from Berners-Lee, and a standard which revolutionized computing and communications.

The Documentation System in the Sky

Berners-Lee decided to write a paper about it. To Berners-Lee it was a difficult idea to explain at the time. He imagined it as “some big, virtual documentation system in the sky” he said. He sent the proposal to his boss, who called it “vague, but exciting” and gave Berners-Lee the green light to work on the project. Indeed his implementation worked so well that he is considered the inventor of the world wide web. Extensions of the HTML standard today, make it possible for anyone with a computer to share information in writing, on a moments notice, with everyone, virtually anywhere in the world. It wouldn’t have happened this way without the work at CERN.

The History of the Browser

The world wide web Berners-Lee invented in 1990 didn’t catch on immediately. In January 1992 there were only 50 web servers in the world. In July of 1992, Perry Wei at UC Berkeley demonstrated the Viola browser for Unix X Windows. In November of 1992, Tony Johnson at SLAC delivered the Midas browser for X Windows. Jim Calliau at CERN started development of the Samba browser for the Macintosh. In December 1992, Perry Wei, embedded programs in HTML pages, which he demonstrated to Sun Microsystems engineers, including the Viola source code. More accomplishments have followed. Today, Internet Explorer is the chief browser and Google is the main search engine for sorting through the billions of documents on the web.

A Call for Raw Data Now

But despite the current success and sophistication of web-based sharing, Berners-Lee directs our attention to a new priority he calls “Raw Data Now.” Speaking at the TED Conference, he made his point with a simple premise, paraphrasing here that: you cannot naturally use data by itself. In other words, for it to be really useful, we should combine and share our data with other data. Berners-Lee calculates that without sharing, data serves a very limited purpose. Not only should we share our data, but we should demand that governments and businesses share the data they prepare as well, he says. Accessible raw data is his new objective for the world wide web. As he points out, “data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives… because somebody takes the data and does something with it.” To Berners-Lee, it is essentially from this sharing of data, that advances in science will emerge.

Three Rules from Tim Berners-Lee

If the past was document sharing, the future is data sharing. Berners-Lee says now, “I want you to put your data on the Web.” But how should we go about that? To answer that question, he provides three points of instruction. One, a URL should point to the data. Two, anyone accessing the URL should get data back. Three, relationships in the data should point to additional URLs with data.

These three rules are a much simpler departure from the past 10 years of discussion, chiefly focused on the “semantic” web and a “resource description framework”. Those concepts have so far received little mainstream acceptance because of their high level of abstraction. Other technology is faring better, in particular the hardware devices. For example, wider data collection through common 3G devices can now monitor traffic, temperature, emergencies and other events with transparent data connectivity. If the past is any indication, hardware advances will continue to arrive much earlier than software advances. So while the raw data is coming, we still have a long way to go before the software to access a world wide web of data is mature.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

Berners-Lee Photo Silvio Tanaka

With little foresight and with the desktop application mentality deeply entrenched at Microsoft, the company poured resources into its operating system, not into web-based applications or the browser platform. Microsoft seems to under-appreciate the browser, but imbraces what Tim Bray calls the sharecropper model, preferring to mimic Adobe with Silverlight. But will Microsoft prevail this time with developer lock-in? Where will companies find developers for these closed platforms, and at what price. Developers today have an abundance of open source choices and are favoring open source convenience versus whatever closed source may yet claim as an advantage. Any advantage that once existed has greatly blurred, because open source is not only convenient — but has nearly no strings attached as far as online service delivery goes. Thus will follow a continued explosion of online applications. 

Documentation System in the Sky

At their inception, the browser and HTML introduced global static publishing to the world. People saw it and acknowledged it as providing a simple, clean, unbiased platform. Tim Berners-Lee called his invention the “documentation system in the sky”. In spite of its humble beginnings, the browser is now everywhere, with Firefox three years later, enjoying eighteen percent market share. Safari is also gaining popularity at nearly five percent market share and could become the de facto browser for mobile applications. Because browser-based applications pose a threat Microsoft desktop licensing, Microsoft continues to demonstrate no roadmap, no leadership, no innovation and meager support for timely browser maintenance, much less improvements.

A few years ago no online application vendors cared to admit that Microsoft-dictated changes to Internet Explorer could ruin their business. There was a conspiracy of silence, for fear of partner repercussions from Microsoft. At that time only Google possibly perceived the potential magnitude of the problem if the browser became encumbered with Microsoft-only features. Today awareness of such general vulnerability has changed, and the industry enjoys more choices and less reliance on Microsoft. For instance, Apple has worked to support Webkit, Mozilla is working on a faster Javascript engine, and Google Gears has made substantial progress in its first year. The browser and online applications market are not only healthy, but are at the cusp of an innovation explosion. As Ben Galbraith said at the Google I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco, Wednesday, “The browser jail is being broken.”

An Embedded SQLite Database

So what’s great about Gears? As Aaron Boodman explains, having a SQLite database allows application data to persist on the client for many useful purposes including full text search. With Gears’ LocalServer, applications can run offline. WorkerPool allows processes to run in a background thread, which helps prevent user interaction from being momentarily blocked, something we have all experienced in a browser. Boodman pointed out several Gears introductions made at the conference, including desktop shortcuts, “toast” style desktop notifications, geolocation, a filepicker and blobs. 

Possibly one of the most beautiful things about Gears is the separate namespace, which means a developer never needs to use anything in Gears unless he or she chooses to.  As Boodman demonstrated, all functionality of the Gears plugin is optional. If the same features are natively implemented in a browser, they can be used by default. The idea of Gears is to extend and encourage innovation in browsers, not dictate standards. Since it’s open source, Gears’ features can be readily adopted by the browser developers too, if they wish.

Google Gears could drive the next wave of online application innovation. With both online and offline data, rapidly developed and deployed applications using Gears will shake out more innovations for both consumers and enterprises. Application vendors placing bets on Silverlight or Flex should take a hard look at Gears. Not only is Gears open and free, there is an even better reason for them to consider Gears. Their futures may depend on it.

Photo Credit: Ralph Bijker