| Meet the Inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee |
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| Friday, 20 November 2009 11:27 | ||||
Page 1 of 2 Inventor of World Wide Web eyes Africa to enhance Internet Use.'Develop more Local content and put it on the Web', urges Inventor of World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee By James Ratemo in Nairobi Kenya must develop local content for Internet users to benefit fully from the under sea cables, founder of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners Lee has said The techno-savvy genius who is in the country for a four-day visit has also urged for wider Internet connectivity of the rural masses to boost economy growth. “I am excited when information is produced locally and consumed locally instead of it being pushed from United States or Hollywood…go put it on the web. It will make the country’s growth go faster,” advised Lee. He said around 80 per cent of humanity are still not utilizing the World Wide Web despite the many benefits that come with the innovation. “The arrival of undersea cables in Kenya is reason for excitement…for success, you need connectivity and content. We need to push from every side to make the web working for all of us,” he said. Meeting Kenya’s Web Science specialists, Berners called for more collaboration among specialists to devise ways to reach masses with the World Wide Web Benefits. Berners-Lee is in the country to understand firsthand the experiences and challenges facing Kenya and generally developing countries in exploiting opportunities for development through the web amongst various sectors. While in the country, he will also launch the World Wide Web Foundation activities, hold discussions to explore areas of further collaboration in order to improve the World Wide Web in order to create more relevant use of content amongst those unconnected. His visit comes at a momentous time when Kenya has just been connected to submarine fibre optic cables and therefore immense internet bandwidth and gearing to cultivate the benefits brought by international connectivity. Kenya is also planning to host in 2010 a meeting of the Internet global organization ICANN. Lee unveiled the World Wide Web Foundation on Tuesday in Cairo Egypt and is in the country to seek partnership on how to improve utilization of the web by the masses across Africa. The Foundation is aimed at assisting academicians and researchers on Web worldwide. “I am here to ask about your experiences in using the web and seek partnership across the world. I am out to know the differences on how the rich, the poor, the rural and the urban masses use the Web,” said Lee, a graduate of Oxford University, England. Hosting Berners-Lee at a Luncheon in Nairobi on Thursday, Vice President, Kalonzo Musyoka said Kenya’s advancement in technology will open it up for business with the rest of the World. Ministry of Information Permanent Secretary said all the bottlenecks in the utilization of the undersea cables in Kenya would be cleared in the next one month to allow Kenyans fully experience the benefits oh high speed Internet associated with fibre cables. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread. He is also a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK. |