Subject:	Berners-Lee's role and position in ongoing matters
Date:	2003-10-02 06:53:15
From:	Barry Schaeffer
Tim can rightly claim great credit for having developed what became the Web; no issue there. However, the history of intellectual and scientific evolution is replete with instances in which an individual displayed greatness at one point and was incapable of duplicating that vision at others; Einstein did most of his really valuable work prior to age 22 and failed in most of his subsequently attempts at greatness. When one ventures into the world of knowledge and its value in society, technological acuity provides no special prescience; for all his technical, aeronautical and navigational prowess, Lindbergh was wrong about almost everything else he did. My sense is that Tim Berners-Lee must take a place in the line of people working to extend and perfect a knowledge world based on his brain child. While hardly to be relegated to the end, he has no claim on the front either.

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