Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited for his development and promotion of hyperlinked documents comes out in this 1998 book to explain the creation of the web and critiques its future. His story is compelling and explains how one man helped take an idea and bring it to fruition in a way that forever revolutionized the world.

The process was not easy and met resistance at all levels of government and the private sector. His employer, CERN, balked at allowing him to promote his project at the cost of their main research projects. The web started out slow, and grew as people started to learn about the power of the Internet and how it could be commercially exploited.

The book ends with a brief discussion of the future of web and some of the major policy battles that were being fought over it in 1998. The Internet brought knew fights against censorship, and forced governments to consider the potential new ramifications of a powerful new technology, that allowed people to communicate across borders to mass audiences with little governmental control. Berners-Lee discusses his behind the scenes roll in such debates, from promoting filtering software as an alternative to censorship, to adding things like PICS to the W3C standards.

Berners-Lee has great hope for the Internet. He sees the Internet as being able to connect people together in new and interesting ways, and to promote social change. We've seen both of those things in forms such as Moveon.org, as site that brings together campaigners for liberal social change. People have also been brought together in other uses like on-line dating sites, and those designed for people in certain cliques from auto mechanics to rural living.

As a whole there is much to like in Berner-Lee's book. It is however 6 years old now, and the Internet has changed greatly since then. I can remember the Internet back in those days, and while we were doing great things back then, things are getting better now. It would be great if Berners-Lee would write an updated book, particularly analyzing contemporary trends on the Internet and their ramifications on the policy process.