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.
I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What's the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.
People banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.
The minimum we should hope for with any display technology is that it should do no harm.
Our hardware is likely to turn into something like us a lot faster than we are likely to turn into something like our hardware...I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't.
On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.
If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.
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