In February, unnoticed by many, two standards became W3C recommendations: the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL). This was the signal that Tim Berners-Lee's next project, the "Semantic Web" - an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation - is considered by the W3C to be ready now for more widespread adoption.

Bringing his keynote audience up to date at the 13th annual WWW Conference, Berners-Lee reported that attendees could go straight out and "Semantic Web-enable" anything they can online - though "We're going to have to bootstrap things in the short term," he conceded.

Referring to the process of getting RDF and OWL to the point where each could become a standard, Berners-Lee admitted that "There was a lot of pain and sweat and tears and discussions and arguments." 

But the next phase, as the Semantic Web delivers on its promise of providing a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries, ought to go more smoothly, he reckoned. "I hope it'll be very exciting. We'll start to get more satisfaction back from actually building applications and seeing them connect together."

In April Berners-Lee was selected unanimously out of a field of 78 innovators from 22 countries and won the very first Millennium Technology Prize awarded by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation for inventing the World Wide Web - "an innovation that directly promotes people's quality of life, is based on humane values and encourages sustainable economic development," as the Foundation award committee said.

In December of 2003, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and became, as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee.