Berners-Lee laments way Web turned out

The man recognised as the creator of the World Wide Web has talked about his embarrassment and continued frustration with his progeny. "I'm embarrassed at how difficult it is," said Briton Tim Berners-Lee. "The problem is, my mother, your mother, our kids... they go out to the search engine, they ask a question. The search engine gives stupid answers because it reads a large proportion of the pages on the entire Web... and it doesn't understand any of them," he lamented Berners-Lee was speaking at a celebratory lunch of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like a parent trying to handle an unruly child, the 'Father of the Web' also spoke of his displeasure at the direction the Web was heading. And like most parents, it involved TV. "It's not supposed to be a glorified television channel," he said. "I had hoped that the Web would be a tool for understanding each other," he said. He also said that the Web was becoming too passive and that it wasn't just about browsing, scouring it for information and then taking it. ''It's not supposed to be a glorified television channel,'' he said. ''I had hoped that the Web would be a tool for understanding each other.'' It also needs people to inject their content and put things back into it, he said. ®