Tim Berners-Lee: Let's use the internet as a giant brain

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If anyone should believe that we can use the internet to solve big human problems, it’s Tim Berners-Lee. He did invent it after all.

And he also believes we could be using it better. One of his current ideas, as reported in Wired, is that we should start using the internet as a giant memory bank allowing us to put our little fragmented minds and thoughts together to form one great creative, whole which could be much more productive.

He said: “There are millions of scientist trying to cure the likes of AIDS and Alzheimer’s. Maybe the cure is currently separated in different people’s heads. How can we design the web so that these half-formed solutions can come together? How can we build a really creative space for scientists?”

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Anna Leach

11 comments

  • Internet has become a part and parcel of my life. I just can’t live without it.

  • Depends which is more important, curing Alzheimer`s. Or making a fast profit on an i-phone applet.

    Patents expire, and copyright infringement cannot be prevented. I`m sure the right balance between cooperation and competition will be struck, it`s a big planet.

    Not everywhere operates like the US.

  • Great idea massively flawed. I do no think medical or other businesses would like scientists or academics sharing info in the public domain. Potentially dangerous.

  • Great idea massively flawed. I do no think medical or other businesses would like scientists or academics sharing info in the public domain. Potentially dangerous.

  • “How can we build a really creative space for scientists”
    What about us non-scientists who have already had ideas about how to use the wealth of information on the internet.
    There’s also a massive issue of intellectual property rights and copyright along the lines of the old BT case for their right to a hyperlink patent. Free is only free until someone realises they have lost out financially. Didn’t free love get kicked out with the 60’s… Open source kicked out in the 2010’s?

    • Good troll but Wrong. The “internet” is the underlying network (IPv4 & IPV6) – the “web” is a suite of applications that runs on the internet – many many other application suites & protocols also run on the internet – FTP, email, DNS etc.

      TBL is a great guy, but not a god, and did not invent the internet – he devised a workable form of a markup language and called it HTML and wrote the first browser & web server (httpd) that runs on IP – initially on an internal IP network then on the internet itself in 1991.

  • “If anyone should believe that we can use the internet to solve big human problems, it’s Tim Berners-Lee. He did invent it after all.”

    Good grief. Get it right. TBL did NOT invent the internet – that was around for years before – he wrote the first browser and developed HTML, the markup language for browsers. TBL is credited as the inventor of the WWW, not, under any circumstances, “the internet”.

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