\u00bbVague, but exciting\u00ab.<\/p>\n
This was his boss\u2019 lukewarm reaction to the hypertext proposal. But Timothy Berners-Lee was persistent: <\/p>\n
\u00bbI needed the system and was fed up not having it\u00ab, he says.<\/p>\n
Life without the internet seems unimaginable. But working as a consultant at the massive underground nuclear laboratory CERN in Switzerland, Berners-Lee was in a place for physics experiments, not software experiments. <\/p>\n
Things could easily have gone another way, and everyone would have stayed offline.<\/p>\n
But they didn\u2019t, and everyone is on the net. <\/p>\n
Berners-Lee is in Copenhagen to receive the Niels Bohr gold medal award from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters together with two other renowned scientists:<\/p>\n
John Pendry for his work on materials with exceptional optical properties – they have been used for camouflage and invisibility cloaks. And Kip Thorne for his contribution to the understanding of black holes and gravitational waves.<\/p>\n
\u00bbThe goal of the internet was that everybody could work anywhere, anytime\u00ab, explains Berners-Lee, who is now considered the father of the internet. With twenty percent of the world\u2019s population using it, that goal seems realistic.<\/p>\n
But it is not only roses, Berners-Lee told the audience. The internet made a gap between users and non-users. <\/p>\n
Now Berners-Lee is the founder of an organisation called the World Wide Web, which tries to alleviate negative consequences and uses the internet as a medium to empower people. <\/p>\n
So what\u2019s the future of the internet?, the University Post asked him afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u00bbIn the short term, it is things like internet on your mobile phone, but in the long term, it\u2019s up to the people\u00ab, he says.<\/p>\n
Uni-avis@adm.ku.dk<\/p>\n