TBL At NESTA

I went to the NESTA Innovation Edge mega-bash yesterday and caught Sir Tim Berners-Lee making a great speech via an equally mega live video screen.  Firstly, he was asked about his reaction to seeing the feedback, 'Vague, but exciting,' on the first paper he wrote about the web, and revealed that this was in fact a personal note scribbled down by his boss Mike Sendall, and only discovered following his death ten years later.  He said the key to such an ambitious project growing was that, while no one had said yes to his revolutionary idea, neither did anyone say no.  He was just given time and space to play around with the notion of hypertext and to 'generalise' a specific problem ie how to let distributed machines share data.  Quoting Einsten, he said that if you know the outcome of a research project before you start then it's not really research.  So 'a long leash' and letting people play around is really important.  His focus is now understanding the different type of 'societies' appearing online and how they affect human behaviour.  Sir Tim then issued a word of warning about the 'stability' of some areas of the web including blogs - or 'social machines' as he calls them.  He wondered if they may eventually become flooded by commercial spam and go the way of email.  Looking ahead, Mr WWW went on to say that he hoped his invention would let people around the world share their thoughts and in doing so tackle some of the really big problems, including AIDS, climate change and poverty.  Or to 'connect humanity' and start a global creative process.  It's amazing to hear an individual talk of such esoteric ambitions and know that he has pretty much delivered!  And it was only afterwards that I realised he hadn't used a single technical term or piece of geekery.  He sounded more like a humanitarian than a technologist.  An amazing man with an amazing story.  (Whereas Johnnie enjoyed the one man life-force that is Geldof.)

Comments

[James Heartfield]

Here are some photos of the event

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69514110@N00/
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35948&id=756513153&ref=mf

[TransportInnovation]

I agree that TBL was really good, but like many I think Geldof was the star of the show. A surprise star for me was Sam Pitroda when he came out with his pithy comments: "how come the best brains of the world are solving the problems of the rich?" and "whoever decided that it takes 4-years to get a degree?".

[TransportInnovation]

I agree that TBL was really good, but like many I think Geldof was the star of the show. A surprise star for me was Sam Pitroda when he came out with his pithy comments: "how come the best brains of the world are solving the problems of the rich?" and "whoever decided that it takes 4-years to get a degree?".

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks for the photos James.

Yep TI, that Geldof dude certainly knows how to work 'em! And I definitely thought Pitroda summed up complex issues well. My favourite was: "Why do 60 year old men still decide how six year olds should learn?"

;-)