World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee says creating order out of the chaos of the Web is the next item on his agenda: "Whereas phase one of the Web put all the accessible information into one huge book, if you like, in phase two we will turn all the accessible data into one huge database. This will have a tremendous effect on e-commerce.

You could say, 'Find me a company selling a half-inch bulb to these specifications,' and a program will go through all the catalogs &£45;- which may be presented in very different formats &£45;- and figure out which fields are equivalent and then build a database and do a comparison very quickly. Then it will just go ahead and order it.

It would be a real mistake for anyone to think the Internet is done or the World Wide Web is done. We're just at the start of these technologies, and there's a huge amount of research to be done. It's very important for the government to keep funding it."

(? Los Angeles)