Blogs (and wikis) help fulfill the read/write web

Sometimes it’s useful to remember that Tim Berners-Lee’s first web browser has an editor built into it, as he reminds us in this BBC interview (Berners-Lee on the read/write web):

Towards a rewritable web
ML: I’m interested that at what sense you began to sense the possibilities. You weren’t thinking car rental, you weren’t thinking blogging, I assume.
TBL: Well in some ways. The idea was that anybody who used the web would have a space where they could write and so the first browser was an editor, it was a writer as well as a reader. Every person who used the web had the ability to write something. It was very easy to make a new web page and comment on what somebody else had written, which is very much what blogging is about.
For years I had been trying to address the fact that the web for most people wasn’t a creative space; there were other editors, but editing web pages became difficult and complicated for people. What happened with blogs and with wikis, these editable web spaces, was that they became much more simple.
When you write a blog, you don’t write complicated hypertext, you just write text, so I’m very, very happy to see that now it’s gone in the direction of becoming more of a creative medium.


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3 responses to “Blogs (and wikis) help fulfill the read/write web”

  1. Camilo Avatar

    Most importantly, that he envisions the whole thing as open and collaborative as possible, thus creating niches and spots within the reach of everyone connected.

  2. SATISH BHARDWAJ Avatar

    What is media junkie saying in this blog? I wish I could understand something because it occupies a commanding position in the search Engine results under Browser Blogs. It has nothing to do with Browsers. At least not something I understand. Probably I’m wasting my time making these comments because they would not be accepted by mediajunkie because they are about something. That something is that if you give your blog a very dramatic name, like rdaio free blogistan, you get the search engines include it in number 1 position in search Engine results.
    I wish I could include my blogs about the need for a browser, that would allow a cellphone to surf the web or make a blog, on the search engine results. Not that my blogs are not included in search engine results. They are. But not under the key words that count. I suppose that my blogs are not about radio freee blogistans. My blogs are about radio technology. Cell phones are wireless and wireless is radio in that it uses the air wave spectrums.
    Then I wish I could come straight out and ask each of the multinationals, that are being plagued by the worms like Hotab and Sasser, and viruses, to donate $5 Million to fund the cost of developing the web Browser and Internet Infrastructure. But I can’t because that would be considered spam. I can’t ask anyway to invest that kind of money to provide seed capital to begin the Browser development project because that would be considered a spam.
    So what can I do? Waste my time commenting on Radio Free Blogistan that is listed on Search under the Browser key word and breaking my heart.

  3. Mini Kahlon Avatar

    funny, just stumbled on your post on the original browser and TBL’s read-write web, and coincidentally just a couple of days ago at a drupal meetup amidst the passionate talk of web 2.0 and flock and .. etc. it stumbled out that in fact the original browser was read-write. I guess just another example of something brilliant being too early to be recognized.