More politicians need to be able to code if they are to legislate effectively on technology, Sir Tim Berners-Lee said on Saturday.

Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web in 1989, said it is crucial that politicians appreciate the technical capabilities of computers and that a knowledge of coding is key.



Speaking at the Every Second Counts Forum, the renowned computer scientist said: “Being able to code means that you understand what people can do with a computer. You need to be able to understand what people can do with a computer to make laws about it.

“We need more people in parliament who can code, not because we need them to spend their time coding but because they have got to understand how powerful a weapon it is, so that they can make laws that require people to code to make machines behave in different ways.”

Berners-Lee applauded the government’s decision to introduce coding into the national curriculum, which will involve children as young as five learning programming skills: “We need to introduce people to coding early so that the people to whom it appeals can then get as much time to do it as they need and really excel. We need more people to have done coding to actually end up doing it for a living.”

Also speaking at the event, space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, returning from a week covering the Rosetta mission in Frankfurt, said an introduction to science at a young age was also vital in kickstarting her career.

Dr Aderin-Pocock said as a child she equated the cartoon characters known as The Clangers with the moon landings and that she first wanted to travel into space to meet the pink creatures: “Most sophisticated people grow out of desires like that but I still want to get into space and it’s been one of the driving forces of my life, which is really quite scary because it formed when I was three.”

That impulse has served as a source of direction in her life: “So you’re sitting at the back of a class at school and you think: ‘Well, how can I get out of here? I need to find a way out.’ You don’t sit back on your laurels. You’ve got that goal ahead. You’re looking over the horizon and so I think that’s what has really driven me.”

After spending the latter part of last week in mission control for the Philae lander, Dr Aderin-Pocock used the session to defend the project from its critics. She said: “We have taken a piece of manmade equipment. We have sent it into space. It’s now sitting on a comet that is half a billion kilometres away from earth. How can we possibly call that a failure?

“The whole Rosetta mission was a challenge. It was a risk and I think we should be encouraged to take more risks. This was a very, very daring mission. We’ve got 90% of the data we wanted. The last 10% was the icing on the cake.”

Dr Aderin-Pocock commented: “It was quite an epitaph that after Armistice Day we were celebrating European union by putting a lander on a comet that is half a billion kilometres away.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock were speaking at the Every Second Counts Forum, a celebration of innovation featuring the Rolex Awards for Enterprise’s 2014 Young Laureates. Profiles of the laureates and their world-changing work can be found here.