One might wonder, what motivated Tim Berners-Lee to invent the world wide web? You might be surprised: the original reason why Berners-Lee undertook this project was to justify the purchase of a $10,000 NeXT computer. According to an article in today's Chicago Tribune:

Although Vice President Al Gore didn't invent the Internet after all, nobody denies that a computer wiz named Tim Berners-Lee really did invent the World Wide Web. His new book, "Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor" ($26, Harper San Francisco) opens with the confession that Berners-Lee's original motive for creating what now is a multibillion-dollar industry was to justify purchasing one of the killer $10,000 NeXT personal computers from Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs that were huge geek status symbols back in the early 1990s.