[LINK] Sir Tim Berners-Lee Advocates Web Apps at Linux Conference in Canberra

[Tom Worthington]

Greetings from Sir Tim Berners-Lee's keynote address on the last day of 
Linux Conference 2013: http://lca2013.linux.org.au/media/news/84

We are in the  Llewellyn Hall at the Australian National University in 
Canberra. The hall is filled with conference delegates and government 
dignitaries. The introduction is being done by Simon Hackett. Simon 
brought along his Next computer, similar to that used for the first web 
server (there were some Next computers at ANU and I saw one in the CB1 
Café in Cambridge): 
http://web.archive.org/web/20091210123343/http://www.acs.org.au/president/1996/epubs/uk.htm

Simon pointed out that Sir Tim set up the W3C organization to foster web 
standards. In my view this was probably as important to its success as 
the original invention (just as the Internet Society fostered the 
Internet): http://www.w3.org/Consortium/facts.html#history

Sir Tim had the audiences on side even before speaking, by wearing the 
conference shirt.He pointed out that only one quarter of the world's 
population. Also most of the population can't code (like the majority of 
the conference delegates). He was making the point that many cannot 
access or create on the web due to language limitations, both technical 
and human.

Two issues Sir Tim touched on was that of the competition for the web 
from mobile "Apps". When information and services are provided via an 
App they are no longer accessible via the web. The Apps are locked away 
in separate systems and can't interact with the web. Sir Tim was 
advocating the use of web apps instead, which can be linked to and from, 
allowing the information to be found and knitted in. He nominated video 
chat embedded in the web as an exciting new feature. By using a standard 
web Api the web apps will be portable across platforms.

Sir Tim then talked about the activism by Aaron Swartz to make 
information freely available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Part of the story I did not know was that public domain activist, Carl 
Malamud, worked with Aaron to put public domain material on the 
Internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Malamud

While explaining he is not a lawyer, Sir Tim expressed the view that 
Aaron had done no more than download a large number of academic 
articles, while prosecutors characterized him as a criminal hacker and 
threat to society.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/