Product Description

Conventional wisdom suggests that advanced countries should abandon manufacturing to pursue a supposedly more prosperous future in so-called 'postindustrial services' such as computer software, entertainment and media, and financial services. The advent of the 'New Economy' driven by communication networks and knowledge workers has seemingly made manufacturing a second or third-world concern, as first-world politicians, economists, financiers and business leaders rush to embrace the new order.

Eamonn Fingleton examines such wisdom, and argues that any country that adopts the postindustrial route at the expense of its manufacturing base risks economic enfeeblement. In Praise of Hard Industries is a controversial but timely assessment of the well-being of our economy, at a time when it is being shaped by new infrastructures and new ideas.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #740760 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Building the Internet was the collective achievement of hundreds of engineers and scientists. The intriguing thing about the World Wide Web is that, alone among Internet technologies, it was conceived and created by a single individual--the English physicist Tim Berners-Lee. He articulated the vision of a global universe of linked documents, wrote the first browser and server programs and came up with the protocols and acronynms (HTTP, URL, HTML, WWW) which are now part of all our lives.

Given the way the Web has become the dominant communications technology of our time, one could argue that Berners-Lee is the guy who invented the future. Yet up to now he has remained reticent about how he did it. Weaving the Web is therefore the definitive account of how the World Wide Web came to be. No one else could have written this book--the history of the Web straight from the source. Yet it's a characteristically modest and self-effacing book, in which Berners-Lee relegates the story of how he came to create the Web to the first 90 pages. They make riveting reading as they tell a story of ingenuity and persistence and vision; but most of all they tell a remarkable parable about civic values. The Intellectual Property Rights embodied in the Web could have made Berners-Lee the richest man in history. Yet he turned his back on the money and set his creation free. He was determined from the outset that the Web should belong not to him but to us.

The remaining 130 pages are devoted to an account of how he implemented this commitment to the public domain by setting up the World Wide Web Consortium--the organisation he created to ensure that that the Web continues to develop without becoming the proprietary reserve of the powerful corporations which aspire to control it. Through this account--of protocol wars and technical disputes and unbearable pressures--runs a consistent vision challenging the prevailing orthodoxy that regards the Web simply as a wonderful new way of doing business. Of course, it is a new way of doing business--but in Berners-Lee's view that is perhaps the least interesting thing about the Web. He continues to view the Web as he has always seen it--as a medium that can codify the sum total of human knowledge and understanding. Weaving the Web is an unforgettable testimony to that heroic vision. --John Naughton

Guardian
"Should be required reading for anyone quitting their nine-to-five for an Internet start-up."

John Naughton, on Tim Berners-Lee, in the Observer
"For this is a man who invented the future, who created something which one day will be bigger than all other industries on earth."

Customer Reviews

The other side of the world wide web
Most people don't understand how Internet is different from World Wide Web. The author, Tim Berners-Lee, shows how the web evolved from his work at CERN and how his own and other people's need led to the initial ideas of the web segmented ideas of HTTP, Internet and URI. He goes on to explain his vision of the web and also explains his decision of not starting his own company as so many others of his time did.
The book also delves into his efforts for making CERN a European hub- a counterpart to MIT in USA. The book then discusses his present role as director of the W3C consortium and its numerous reseachers.
Also, the book illustrates the need for
keeping the web decentralized and free from monopolistic technologies.
The book is meant for non-technical people as
well. Tim has to be congratuled for doing a thorough job and the book has a decent cover and printing - which all makes it an enriching experience to read.

Weaving the Web
For some reason I now seem to be reading a lot of computer / internet related books and I blame this book for starting it all.

It's a fascinating account of how the web evolved and gives you a real grass roots feel, to the now highly commercialised internet.

I have great respect for the author because unlike other famous software veterans, it was not his vision to profit from his development but to benefit others.

The book goes onto to describe the future of the internet in the view of its creator, as good a guess as any and you can see it already coming true. Look at XML its eveywhere.

Brilliant book fuels the desire to learn about the history and future of the technologies we have today and tomorrow.

Past Present & Future – by the man who invented it
Tim Berners-Lee explains how the Internet got started, but how he then conceived of the World Wide Web, all in a very non-technical way.

Berners-Lee is a very modest man, and tells a good story that makes you feel you were there.

He then takes us through his plans for the future of the WWW; obviously there are greater commercial forces now at play that might foil his plans, but good luck to him in his endeavours.