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ultimate form, Berners-Lee's Web has already established its uniqueness.

Thousands of computer scientists had been staring for two decades at the same two things—hypertext and computer networks. But only Tim conceived of how to put those two elements together to create the Web. What kind of different thinking led him to do that? No doubt the same thinking I see driving him today as he and the World Wide Web Consortium team that he directs strive to define tomorrow's Web. While the rest of the world is happily mouthing the mantra of electronic commerce, he is thinking of the Web as a medium that would codify, in its gigantic distributed information links, human knowledge and understanding.

When I first met Tim, I was surprised by another unique trait of his. As technologists and entrepreneurs were launching or merging companies to exploit the Web, they seemed fixated on one question: "How can I make the Web mine?" Meanwhile, Tim was asking, "How can I make the Web yours?" As he and I began planning his arrival at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and the launching of the World Wide Web Consortium, his consistent aim was to ensure that the Web would move forward, flourish, and remain whole, despite the yanks and pulls of all the companies that seemed bent on controlling it. Six years later, Tim's compass is pointed in exactly the same direction. He has repeatedly said no to all kinds of seductive opportunities if they threatened, in the least, the Web's independence and wholeness, and he remains altruistic and steadfast to his dream. I am convinced that he does so not only from a desire to ensure the Web's future, but also from a wellspring of human decency that I find even more impressive than his technical prowess.

When I first suggested to Tim that he write this book, and having just finished one myself, I was envisioning a series of books from the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) in which we would discuss in everyday language our innovations