Interview with “Father of the Internet”
Monday, March 27th, 2006
I came across an interesting interview with Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the Internet.
What would Berners-Lee change about the internet addressing system if he could start from scratch? Looks like the biggest thing is to drop a slash (/):
Looking back on 15 years or so of development of the Web is there anything you would do differently given the chance?
I would have skipped on the double slash – there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the domain name in the reverse order – in order of size so, for example, the BCS address would read: http:/uk.org.bcs/members. The last two terms of this example could both be servers if necessary.
I suppose it’s not very relevant anymore since end users don’t type http:// into their browsers anyway. The second part, about putting the domain name extension at the front of the domain, is rather interesting. Can you imagine typing com.amazon instead of amazon.com?
Another interesting comment:
I don’t think we’ve gained anything from the .biz or .info domains – only that a few companies have benefited financially.
This is true. The registries responsible for the domain have benefited, and it’s given affordable alternatives to web site owners, but these new domains have also increased confusion. It’s not like there’s any real identification difference between .biz, .info, .org, .net, and .com–any business or non-profit can register any extension. In the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey, 45% of respondents said they didn’t want to see more domain extensions (like .biz).
Read the entire interview here.
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Nice find here – I am a little behind in reading your blog, just catching up now.
Just a quick correct: Tim was the one who conceived the Web, not the Internet
Keep up the great work,
/Frank