By then, this thing called the Internet had already been around for a while; it just wasn’t very useful for anyone besides scientists and geniuses. It was used primarily to transfer files and numbers on a terminal-to-terminal basis. Tim changed that by creating a common language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) in which documents could be created and/or viewed by anyone, anywhere, on any type of system; and random things inside these documents could be “linked” to countless other documents anywhere else. In so many words, he was the first guy to underline names and make them blue so that when you click on them you can see more details about the same thing somewhere else. He also developed a system by which all documents globally would have unique titles and it would be impossible for two people on opposite sides of the world to come up with the same one. (These are now called URLs: Universal Resource Locators.)

How Tim Berners-Lee might look to a computer (artist's rendering)

First, he gave his little program away to the people in the high energy physics world. I seriously doubt that you know any of these people. Then he posted a web page on the first web server (at CERN in Switzerland) which outlined all the specifications for how to create compatible documents.

Well, in 1991, when Tim’s little World Wide Web program hit the Internet, all these scientists and geniuses were basically standing around shitting their pants. This stupid word called “cyberspace” actually became something tangible, because now it could be seen and navigated. Better yet, it could be navigated not only by scientists and geniuses, but also by dumb motherfuckers like you. Why, in the first five years of Tim’s program and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) being available, the number of Internet users exploded from 600,000 to 40 million. In the mid-1990’s, it was doubling every 53 days. Eight years into it, there were 150 million Internet users.

Nowadays, as you know, everyone who has a website is a millionaire. So too, you might think, is the mastermind of the whole thing. Think again. Lord Point-n-Click is so smart he doesn’t even need money! Every time Tim had a chance to cash in, like the square he is, he didn’t do it.

Some other jackass, Marc Andreessen, helped write a program called Mosaic which was the first popular web browser; then he co-founded a little sweatshop called Netscape and made millions of dollars.

Now Tim works at MIT where, in 1994, he formed the World Wide Web Consortium. This group of hackers and conspiracy theorists sit around all day and discuss new computer protocols. Basically, it’s their job to determine what the standards are so that when Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Netscape, and all the other computer and software companies come out with new web-related products, they’re all compatible with each other. Sounds like a real exciting life, Tim.

The End.