The next big thing on the web is widely supposed to be computers learning to "reason", as the long march to artificial intelligence begins in earnest. Park the hype, and the new "semantic web" is still revolutionary enough that your computer could use it to book a dental appointment at a practice near you - without being asked - or allow researchers based anywhere in the world to share and explore their data as they hunt cures for diseases. The man behind the web, however, is the unrevolutionary and private Tim Berners-Lee. Personal information about the man, appropriately enough, has to be gleaned from the web he proposed back in 1989. What really counts for him are ideas, ideals, global utopias, egalitarian communication and neutral open formats - all markers for a lack of ego in a cyberworld. Everything from being the son of British mathematicians who worked on one ...