Briefly discuss the contribution to modern society made by Tim Berners-Lee.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland envisioned the use of hyperlinks to make connections between related ideas in separate documents. Hypertext, which is a system of hyperlinks that allows users to click on a word to jump to another location within the same file, was already in use. Hypertext also allowed users to link to different files in the same location, but only when an index of the links was kept in a central database. Frustrated with these limitations, Berners-Lee visualized a system in which all of the various projects at CERN could cross-reference each other easily. He wrote a proposal outlining his vision, suggesting that hyperlinked resources should not be restricted to text, but could include graphics, video, or other document elements.?With the help of his CERN colleague Robert Cailliau, Berners-Lee created three technologies to make his ideas about hyperlinked documents a reality. First, he created Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), used to create documents that can include text, graphics, and links. Berners-Lee then created a special software program to read and display HTML documents, the first browser known as WorldWideWeb (spelled with no spaces). Finally, because document links had to refer to the specific server that stored the linked document, Berners-Lee devised a web addressing system and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a protocol that defines how HTML documents transmit to a browser.