Berners-Lee, Gödel and Turing

What do Tim Berners-Lee, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing having in common? I’m not entirely sure. But that’s the title of a newly arrived book, “Thinking on the Web: Berners-Lee, Gödel and Turing,” by Peter Alesso and Craig Smith. I’m intrigued.

The back cover says:

Tim Berners-Lee, Kurt Gödel, and Alan Turing are the pivotal pioneers who opened the door to the Information Revolution, beginning with the introduction of the computer in the 1950s and continuing today with the World Wide Web evolving into a resource with intelligent features and capabilities. Taking the main questions posed by these thinkers—”What is decidable?” by Gödel, “What is machine intelligence?” by Turing, and “What is solvable on the Web?” by Berners-Lee—as jumping-off points, Thinking on the Web offers an incisive guide to just how much “intelligence” can be projected onto the Web.

One of the benefits of being a technology journalist/analyst is that books like this show up, unannounced, courtesy of publishing companies (in this case, Wiley), who hope that I’ll review it. Dozens of titles show up on my doorstep each month; a few get kept, but most are donated to a local junior college library. This one looks interesting; I’ll read it on my next plane trip, and let you know what I think. If you’ve already read it, feel free to beat me to it and post your own comments.