Interview with the Inventor of the World Wide Web
In commemoration of the world wide web’s 15 year anniversary, its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, recently discussed the birth of the internet and his vision for its future with the BBC. While young people today may take the internet for granted, Sir Tim points out that its creation and dissemination were plagued by uncertainty and controversial decisions. One of the most historic of these choices was to release the code to the public:
“We had to convince them (the directors at CERN) that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore Cern couldn’t hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away.”
In the end, competitors who tried to sell their technology lost their edge, and the world wide web continues to expand and evolve today thanks to the contributions from millions of people all over the world. Looking ahead, Sir Tim states:
“What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance…My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet.”
BBC Interview
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