What Does the Inventor of Internet Think of What His Creation Has Become?

This Monday, March 11, was a special anniversary for the World Wide Web. Exactly 30 years ago on this day, Timothy Berners-Lee, the co-founder of the Internet, created the first draft sketch of his vision of the World Wide Web.

A lot of time has passed and many things have changed. The Internet “web” has covered the whole planet and developed tremendously; but, unfortunately, both in good and bad directions.

In honor of this memorable day, Timothy Berners-Lee spoke with Time and expressed his opinion on what his development has turned into and what it might become in the nearest future.

Timothy Berners-Lee

Before we start talking about the Internet, we would like you to know a bit more about one of its founding fathers - Timothy John «Tim» Berners-Lee.

From the very young age, Berners-Lee showed strong aptitude towards technologies. Being a student of Oxford university, he created his own computer with a television used as screen and was even caught when trying to conduct a hacker attack together with his friend.

Having received a degree with honors in science, Berners-Lee started working for the company D.G Nash Ltd where he developed software for printers.

Afterwards, the tech mastermind became a software consultant for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. This is exactly the place where he created ENQUIRE, a software project which became the conceptual basis for the World Wide Web.

Besides, his main development, Berners-Lee also invented URL, HTTP, HTML, URI. The developer is an acting head of the World Wide Web Consortium.

What does Berners-Lee think of Internet nowadays?

Speaking with

Time

, Timothy Berners-Lee called the Internet “mirror of humanity”, which means there will obviously be good and bad stuff, however, some things are really raising his concern, namely “

state-sponsored hacking, online harassment, hate speech, misinformation etc

.”

He believes that the World Wide Web is going to grow and expand massively in the coming years, thus, the problems that do exist now need to be addressed and solved, given the fact that around one half of the whole world has access to Internet.

“ Look at the 50 percent who are on the web, and it’s not so pretty for them. They are all stepping back suddenly horrified after the Trump and Brexit elections realizing that this web thing that they thought was so cool has actually not necessarily been serving humanity very well ,” Berners-Lee said.

The desperate hope of the developer is that in the future the Internet will be the place, accessible for everyone and open for all the people to express themselves freely.

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