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World Wide Whatever? Are You Serious?

by Mark Evans on Sun 06 Aug 2006 11:15 AM EDT | Permanent Link

The Toronto Star has a lengthy feature today looking at how the Internet has progressed since Tim Berners-Lee introduced his Web protocols in 1990/1991. In general, the story is fairly down on the Web and its ability to create or inspire change or solutions to major issues such as AIDS or cancer. (Notwithstanding the impact of e-commerce, social networking, e-mail, blogging, etc.) The story features several quotes from Berners-Lee, which appear to have come from interviews he gave a few years ago, including one with MIT's Technology Review magazine in Oct., 2004. The story also takes a subtle run at the blogsophere - describing bloggers as "online diarists", and offers up a quote from the Globe & Mail's media writer Rick Salutin, who says the "main qualification for blogging is you failed to get a mainstream media job."
Update: For some other views on the where the Web is headed, check out this story on the BBC , Wired and Read/Write Web. The BBC also has a story on how the Web emerged

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Re: World Wide Whatever? Are You Serious?

by Mark G on Sun 06 Aug 2006 12:03 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Either Rick Salutin is saying you are over-qualified for blogging, or he doesn't believe the Post is 'mainstream media'.

Re: World Wide Whatever? Are You Serious?

by Boris Mann on Sun 06 Aug 2006 01:36 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

And of course, Tim Berners-Lee has a blog -- it runs on Drupal, the open source CMS I work on, so I'm extra proud to be pointing to it.

Re: World Wide Whatever? Are You Serious?

by Tyler on Sun 06 Aug 2006 08:01 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

I think David is a top-notch veteran when it comes to journalism, but I'm disappointed with his take on the Web. I know his style is often to deflate things that may be overhyped, but he does seriously downplay the impact of the Web on the lives of people. Fact is, we all can't imagine life without the Web and that in itself is an amazing thing.

David has written similar features downplaying the significance of fuel cells and biofuels, and while I think there's a need for a healthy dose of skepticism, I think he goes too far sometimes.

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\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>