The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.
Tim Berners-LeeRead
I think a lot of great software has been written by people who are scratching a short-term itch, something which has been niggling them for ages, but in the back of their mind they’ve got a wonderful long-term plan.
Interpretation
Great software often originates from addressing immediate problems while having a broader vision for the future.
Tim Berners-Lee highlights that many successful software developments stem from individuals who are initially motivated by a pressing issue they want to resolve. Yet, behind that immediate need lies a deeper, long-term ambition that drives the continued evolution and purpose of the software.
In practice
This quote can be used in a tech conference to inspire developers facing challenges in their projects.
The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.
[The internet] ought to be like clay, rather than a sculpture that you observe from a distance.
The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future.
Technology innovation is starting to explode and having open-source material out there really helps this explosion. You get students and researchers involved and you get people coming through and building start ups based on open source products.
One way to think about the magnitude of the changes to come is to think about how you went about your business before powerful Web search engines. You probably wouldn't have imagined that a world of answers would be available to you in under a second. The next set of advances will have an different effect, but similar in magnitude.
Software companies should take more responsibility for security holes, especially in browsers and e-mail clients. There are some straightforward things the industry should be doing right now to fix things, and I don't know why they haven't been done yet.
Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies.
Overnight the digital age had changed the course of history for our company. Everything that we thought was in our control no longer was. But within a year we had invested in social media and digital experts. Now Starbucks is the number one brand on Facebook.
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that's odd, but I think it's odd if artists aren't interested in the world around them. I'm always chasing that.
Technology is rooted in the past. It dominates the present and tends into the future. It is a real historical movement - one of the great movements which shape and represent their epoch.
There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.