Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist. He was born
in London, and his parents were early computer scientists, working on one of
the earliest computers.
Growing up, Sir Tim was interested in trains and had a model
railway in his bedroom. He recalls:
“I made some electronic gadgets to control the trains. Then I
ended up getting more interested in electronics than trains. Later on, when I
was in college I made a computer out of an old
television set.”
After graduating from Oxford University, Berners-Lee became a
software engineer at CERN, the large
particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists come from all
over the world to use its accelerators, but Sir Tim noticed that they were
having difficulty sharing information.
“In those days, there was different information on different
computers, but you had to log on to different computers to get at it. Also,
sometimes you had to learn a different program on each computer. Often it was
just easier to go and ask people when they were having coffee…”, Tim says.
Tim thought he saw a way to solve this problem – one that he could
see could also have much broader applications. Already, millions of computers
were being connected together through the fast-developing Internet and
Berners-Lee realised they could share information by exploiting an emerging
technology called hypertext.
In March 1989, Tim laid out his vision for what would become the
Web in a document called “Information
Management: A Proposal”. Believe it or not, Tim’s initial proposal
was not immediately accepted. In fact, his boss at the time, Mike
Sendall, noted the words “Vague but exciting” on the cover. The Web
was never an official CERN project, but Mike managed to give Tim time to work
on it in September 1990. He began work using a NeXT computer, one
of Steve Jobs’ early products.
Tim’s
original proposal. Image: CERN
By October of 1990, Tim had written the three fundamental
technologies that remain the foundation of today’s Web (and which you may have
seen appear on parts of your Web browser):
- HTML:
HyperText Markup Language. The markup (formatting) language for the Web.
- URI:
Uniform Resource Identifier. A kind of “address” that is unique and used
to identify to each resource on the Web. It is also commonly called a URL.
- HTTP:
Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Allows for the retrieval of linked resources
from across the Web.
Tim also wrote the first Web page editor/browser
(“WorldWideWeb.app”) and the first Web server (“httpd“). By the end of 1990,
the first Web page was served on the open internet, and in 1991, people outside
of CERN were invited to join this new Web community.
As the Web began to grow, Tim realised that its true potential
would only be unleashed if anyone, anywhere could use it without paying a fee
or having to ask for permission.
He explains: “Had
the technology been proprietary, and in my total control, it would probably not
have taken off. You can’t propose that something be a universal space and at
the same time keep control of it.”
So, Tim and others advocated to ensure that CERN would agree to
make the underlying code available on a royalty-free basis, for ever. This
decision was announced in April 1993,
and sparked a global wave of creativity, collaboration and innovation never
seen before. In 2003, the companies developing new Web standards committed to a
Royalty Free Policy for their work. In 2014, the year we celebrated the Web’s 25th birthday, almost two
in five people around the world were using it.
Tim moved from CERN to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1994 to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),
an international community devoted to developing open Web standards. He remains the
Director of W3C to this day.
The early Web community produced some revolutionary ideas that
are now spreading far beyond the technology sector:
- Decentralisation:
No permission is needed from a central authority to post anything on the
Web, there is no central controlling node, and so no single point of
failure … and no “kill switch”! This also implies freedom from
indiscriminate censorship and surveillance.
- Non-discrimination:
If I pay to connect to the internet with a certain quality of service, and
you pay to connect with that or a greater quality of service, then we can
both communicate at the same level. This principle of equity is also known
as Net Neutrality.
- Bottom-up
design: Instead of code being written and controlled by a small group of
experts, it was developed in full view of everyone, encouraging maximum
participation and experimentation.
- Universality:
For anyone to be able to publish anything on the Web, all the computers
involved have to speak the same languages to each other, no matter what
different hardware people are using; where they live; or what cultural and
political beliefs they have. In this way, the Web breaks down silos while
still allowing diversity to flourish.
- Consensus:
For universal standards to work, everyone had to agree to use them. Tim
and others achieved this consensus by giving everyone a say in creating
the standards, through a transparent, participatory process at W3C.
New permutations of these ideas are giving rise to exciting new
approaches in fields as diverse as information (Open Data), politics (Open
Government), scientific research (Open Access), education, and culture (Free
Culture). But to date we have only scratched the surface of how these
principles could change society and politics for the better.
In 2009, Sir Tim established the World Wide Web Foundation. The
Web Foundation is advancing the Open Web as a means to build a just and
thriving society by connecting everyone, raising voices and enhancing
participation
