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I discovered that when I went to interview Tim Berners-Lee in 1996 for the now-defunct WebMaster Magazine. After I'd lobbed my first question, he was silent for a very long time.

Then, in his clipped British accent, he asked, "Have you looked at my Frequently Asked Questions? You'd get a lot of points with me as a journalist if you'd actually looked at them first."

His hope -- then and now -- was that a FAQ posted on the Web would render interviews superfluous, insulating him from stupid, redundant or intrusive questions. (One of the questions on his current FAQ, for example, reads, "Can you tell me more about your personal life?" The answer: "No, I can't.")

So why, then, write "Weaving the Web," Berners-Lee's account of how and why he devised the most important new communications medium since television? A central motivation, apparently, was to forever alleviate his frustrations with journalists and members of the public who insist on learning the particulars of the Web's origins.

Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web By Its Inventor By Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Fischetti (Contributor) Harper San Francisco 224 pages

"This book is written to address all the questions people ask me, whether they meet me in a bookstore or ask me to make a keynote speech at a conference," he explains on his site. "From 'What were you thinking when you invented it?' through 'So what do you think of it now?' to 'Where is this all going to take us?' this is the story."

Given that Berners-Lee isn't exactly a candidate for "The New Hollywood Squares," I found myself wondering exactly who was pestering him in bookstores and at conferences. A friend pointed out, though, that Berners-Lee is the Ricky Martin of techie circles; wherever he goes, he draws a crowd.

"Weaving the Web" seems to be directed at just that crowd. It's a worthwhile if rather disappointing read for those interested in the genesis story of the Web and Berners-Lee's hopes for its future development. It offers more insight into Berners-Lee and the Web's pre-commercial days than anything yet published. But Berners-Lee evinces little joy in writing about himself and his creative process -- he's no Richard Feynman.

As a book, "Weaving the Web" is part history, part manifesto, part autobiography. That unusual amalgam is hinted at by the book's unwieldy subtitle: "The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web By Its Inventor." The history section works best, as Berners-Lee has never before told his version of the Web's birth and tenuous toddlerhood. Later sections read like an operating handbook for the World Wide Web Consortium and a highly detailed outline of the new protocols and features Berners-Lee believes the Web needs. This is not, in other words, stuff that a general business reader will lap up.

Next page | What about those math games over breakfast?