Tim Berners-Lee is regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet alongside Vint Cerf. While working at CERN twenty years ago, the British-born Berners-Lee forwarded the concept of the World Wide Web to his bosses. The rest, as they say, is history. But Berners-Lee feels there is a blot on the Internet landscape in the form of those two forward slashes present in Web addresses. So he’d like to apologize for them.

Berners-Lee was working at CERN when, in 1989, he proposed the idea of a World Wide Web, a interconnected network of computers around the world. The basic outlines of the idea were already in existence but it was Berners-Lee and his team which cemented the ideas and made the Web a reality. Twenty years later and it’s almost impossible to think of a world without the Web.

However, at a symposium on the future of technology last week, The New York Times asked Berners-Lee whether he would do anything differently in creating the Web. Does he have any regrets?

Strangely, the answer was yes, but it’s a peculiar thing to regret. Berners-Lee indicated that if he had his time again he’d get rid of the two forward slashes (//) that sit between the ‘http:’ and the ‘www’ in a properly formatted Web address. The double slash was a programming convention at the time but now means absolutely nothing.

Berners-Lee explained that he can’t help thinking of the amount of paper wasted with people writing down the // and the amount of time and labor wasted by people typing the // into Web browsers. And he has a point, especially as they don’t actually do anything.

However, Berners-Lee really shouldn’t worry because although I remember a time when people did spell out Web addresses complete with the ‘http:’ and //, that time has long gone. It’s now just www.blorge.com with even the ‘www’ optional more times than not. And modern browsers cope perfectly well without anything prior to ‘www’ as well.

An apology was nice but really not necessary. And considering what Berners-Lee has given us, I think forgiveness for a couple of superfluous forward slashes is definitely on the agenda.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 2:10 am under Amusing, Internet, Opinion, Technology.

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