Every once an a while an invention comes along that seems to change the world. Such were the automobile, the printing press, television, and even the heat pump, but none of them changed the world as fast as the World Wide Web. It was born just 15 years ago today, by one measurement, yet the Web has managed to affect everything from international commerce to personal relations, from how revolutions begin to how you look up a recipe for corn muffins....On November 12, 1990, he formally proposed his project in a memo to his employers at CERN. Implementation went forward the next day. By the time he introduced the Web to the public, personal computers had become very popular, so it was easy for people to join it. Within five years, the Web had 40 million users. In 2004 Computer Industry Almanac estimated that 1.07 billion people used it regularly....Berners-Lee was driven by a free-spirited curiosity and desire to make information accessible to everyone, and he has remained devoted to using the Web to keep the Internet, which was once only a tool of the elite, open to the masses....While the inventors of Netscape and Google and other businesses have amassed millions, Berners-Lee has not capitalized on the Web’s moneymaking potential. Instead he has stood by the principles of open access and the democratizing possibilities of his invention.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/14/2005 07:37:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
