When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free.
Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.
In Australia to promote his book, This is for Everyone, Berners-Lee is reflecting on what his invention has become – and how he and a community of collaborators can put the power of the web back into the hands of its users.
Berners-Lee describes his excitement in the earliest years of the web as “uncontainable”. Approaching 40 years on, a rebellion is brewing among himself and a community of like-minded activists and developers.
“We can fix the internet … It’s not too late,” he writes, describing his mission as a “battle for the soul of the web”.
Berners-Lee traces the first corruption of the web to the commercialisation of the domain name system, which he believes would have served web users better had it been managed by a nonprofit in the public interest. Instead, he says, in the 1990s the .com space was pounced on by “charlatans”.
The fact that no one is challenging “internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee” is making me want to blow up my desktop
Yeah, I thought it was Al Gore
I came here to post this, everyone knows Al Gore invented the internet.
Sadly most people don’t understand the difference between www and the internet.
Yeah but I kind of expected The Guardian to…
I’d give anything for the internet to go back to how it was in the early/mid 90s.
Back before it was corporatized, monetized and before all the gardens started building their walls.
God yes. Back in 1995, the web felt like a little village. You knew everyone in your particular digital neighbourhood so to speak. Lots of great forums, lots of little niche websites… nothing was really commercialised yet:
And frankly, I liked that it was a nerdy thing as well. Everyone shared at least some level of knowledge and understanding of what the web was. And we were all some level of nerd, whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, trains, flightsim, Sci-Fi or whatever niche interest you had.
We lost all that when we made the web too accessible to the general public. We should’ve kept it to ourselves.
back when the internet was just a curiousity for weirdos and geeks.
There was no advertising
Every website was a passion project (or a mental illness coughtimecubecough)
There were no search engines. Just “internet yellowpages” that listed links to every known website.
Websites spread via word of mouth and webrings.
Websites had guest books and visitor counters.
your counter hitting 1000 was an actual big deal.
animated gifs and tables were bleeding edge technologies.
that internet still exists and it works a lot better than back then
you’re just not using it
the search providers (especially that famously ‘not evil’ one) had a huge hand in centralising and then gatekeeping access to ‘the web’. They have such a disproportionately powerful effect on how users discover content, and huge power to drive self-fulfilling ‘network effects’ where people go where people already are, which has become so normalised that most people couldn’t imagine ‘the web’ without them.
i’m not suggesting it was ever realistic or possible, but what we needed was for that one search provider and indexer of content to be broken up, partially nationalised, and partially integrated into the network specification itself. Only they are powerful enough to become a model for how to functionally disentangle their operations into public and private parts.
the only alternative is to break the centralisation of the web as china is doing and other BRICS nations intend to do, by creating ‘national internets’ which in some ways federate together and in other ways do not. I don’t like this model of development for the future of the internet but the security considerations of the present require this kind of approach.
They kind of fix this in the lede, but dude did not invent the internet, he invented the World Wide Web. The internet is a superset of a whole bunch of things that includes the World Wide Web, but dude wasn’t out there inventing TCP/IP and routers and whatnot.
Nowhere does it say he calls himself the creator. I’d be looking at the media for labelling him that.
You’re thinking of the ARPANET. When people think of the Internet. They think of the network that Gore pushed hard to open to the public. And the interface Lee designed. Gopher is having a small resurgence, and Gemini exists. But effectively what the average person sees as the Internet is their child philosophically.
I mean as a techy you aren’t wrong. There’s a lot of underlying things and technologies that sort of glosses over. But to the layperson at large we’re just pedantically nitpicking.
Gopher is having a small resurgence, and Gemini exists.
You forgot email. That seems like a pretty important use of the Internet that isn’t the web.
You mean spam trap? Outside of 2FA or a few other small things, which even those are using it less. Who actively engages with it on a regular basis. I can DM friends and family easier, with less spam and restrictions on multiple other platforms. And those that do actively engage with it are often using HTML hypertext interfaces. (Proton Gmail etc) I didn’t mention Usenet either. Or ssh that I use daily.
Most people don’t have a pop or SMTP app installed anymore. Not outlook, not Thunderbird, etc etc etc. It’s easy to imagine a world without email. So many other apps and services easily slot in to replace it. And already have in many places. Now, try to imagine a world without HTML or HTTP servers. What would that even look like?
Email is still extremely popular and used quite frequently for more than chatting with friends. Businesses use email to communicate with customers. Schools use email to communicate with parents. Doctors use email to communicate with patients. Utility bills are sent via email. Etc, etc, etc.
Just because you don’t have a use for it doesn’t mean it’s useless.
Where did I say it was useless. You’re trying hard to be offended.
You’re trying hard to just be negative.
Where did I say it was useless. You’re trying hard to be offended.
Well, your intentionally inflammatory comment certainly doesn’t help your case:
You mean spam trap? Outside of 2FA or a few other small things, which even those are using it less. Who actively engages with it on a regular basis. I can DM friends and family easier, with less spam and restrictions on multiple other platforms. And those that do actively engage with it are often using HTML hypertext interfaces. (Proton Gmail etc) I didn’t mention Usenet either. Or ssh that I use daily.
Most people don’t have a pop or SMTP app installed anymore. Not outlook, not Thunderbird, etc etc etc. It’s easy to imagine a world without email. So many other apps and services easily slot in to replace it. And already have in many places. Now, try to imagine a world without HTML or HTTP servers. What would that even look like?
I use Thunderbird on my personal phone, and Outlook on my work phone (configured via MDM). The Gmail app that so many people use can also download emails.
Email is still extremely popular and used quite frequently for more than chatting with friends. Businesses use email to communicate with customers. Schools use email to communicate with parents. Doctors use email to communicate with patients. Utility bills are sent via email. Etc, etc, etc.
Web portal, web portal, web portal, oh and web portal. Web portals are what people use. Apps, too. Email, you mean GMail and Outlook?
Web portal, web portal, web portal, oh and web portal. Web portals are what people use.
That just sounds like “there’s an app for that” with extra steps. Why use this when you can just get the app? Why use that when you can just get the app?
That’s part of what put us into this “everything is tracking you” predicament today.
Apps, too. Email, you mean GMail and Outlook?
I use Thunderbird on my phone and Outlook on my work phone. Also, email accessed through a web portal vs locally doesn’t mean anything when SMTP is used for both on the backend.
That said, I hate web portals for everything. Many are poorly optimized for mobile, I don’t want to be stuck on desktop just to get a PDF of an invoice, and none of them actually notify me about anything. Email is already on my phone - it’s one of the definitive features that created the “smart” phone segment in the first place.
Tons of people engage with email regularily, including through standalone MUAs.*
But my point is that email was big before the web even grew to its current significance. So I think common people have at least that one point of contact with the internet that is quite distinct from the web in their memory.
But maybe it’s really a generational question. I have to concede that a lot of people now use web interfaces for their email client, especially outside of corporate managed devices. Late milennials and Gen Z will have grown up with the web being more significant than email.
* Don’t forget about the MUAs on smartphone OSes, those aren’t web based.
– signed, a late milennial network engineer, whose dad always installed outlook on the family computers
PS: Funny story last week I was at CERN at the CIXP, the CERN Internet Exchange Point, to upgrade a connection to 400Gb/s, and in the lobby of the building they hung up the cover pages of Tim Berners-Lee’s original Hypertext and HTTP papers. And further in the have his original NeXTStation displayed
Every one with an office job uses it daily
Email is absolutely still used massively, especially in the business world. Even if someone is accessing their emails in a browser, they are still being sent with SMTP behind the scenes.
There’s also SSH, NTP, VOIP, FTP, BitTorrent, and probably more that I’m forgetting, that all have varying degrees of usage today.
Don’t get me wrong, HTTP is certainly by far the most used protocol, but it is in no way the only important one that would be difficult to replace.
Okay, and? Go back and read my posts. That has nothing to do with anything I was talking about. I specifically mentioned that I was referring to lay people and that I thought myself being a techy that it was glossing over a lot of nuance.
But then I also pointed out that it was nitpicky and pedantic nerdsplaning. Something I should have paid attention to myself. Hell, it’s something I’ve done myself. So it’s not like I’m trying to insult you. I understand 100% how this happens.
You mean spam trap? Outside of 2FA or a few other small things, which even those are using it less. Who actively engages with it on a regular basis.
And those that do actively engage with it are often using HTML hypertext interfaces. (Proton Gmail etc)
My first paragraph was a direct response to these sentences.
It’s easy to imagine a world without email. So many other apps and services easily slot in to replace it. And already have in many places. Now, try to imagine a world without HTML or HTTP servers. What would that even look like?
My second and third paragraphs were a direct response to this.
My generalized interpretation of your comment was that laypeople don’t use email anymore, their only interaction with the internet is through HTTP, and HTTP is the only internet protocol that could not be easily replaced.
My counter argument was that laypeople in the business world absolutely still use email daily, almost always through a client like Outlook, and there are a number of other protocols with varying degrees of usage (among laypeople and enthusiasts) that would also be very difficult to replace.
I apologize if I misunderstood your comment, but hopefully this clarifies my point and intentions.
I dont think so.
Saying Lee invented the web, to the lay person, implies that he invented the web we have in 2026. As though he was the grand architect of the platform we use today.
Yes, in the 80s he was a pioneer in digital communication specifications. However, I dont think many of the relevant skills are transferable to addressing the capitalist motives and ethical deficiencies which have infected the web in the interceding 40 years.
It feels a bit like asking an actor their opinion on politics.
Everything you’ve said has been ruined by that last sentence.
It feels a bit like asking an actor their opinion on politics.
This is a remarkably idiotic statement.
Edit: if you think an actors opinion on politics doesnt matter, then neither does that of a musician, firefighter, dance teacher, engineer, developer, or anyone else other than a politician.
That line of thought is really fucking stupid.
People say wifi when they mean the Internet, somehow one cannot expect accuracy. Articles always get written by professional clueless people also.
And the “World Wide Web” mostly means HTML - “hypertext” documents which can be published on the internet, and which are regular documents but with embedded links to other documents (hyperlinks), and a vision to ultimately create the “semantic web” - human-readable text which can also be processed by computers.
To be exact, Tim Berners Lee invented the original HTML specification, the HTTP communication protocol, and a proof-of-concept browser that implements both of them. These three things were required - on top of TCP, IP, Ethernets, that already existed - to build the Web.
I have a simple fix but that which is difficult by virtue of momentum of the people. Don’t visit corporate websites. Avoid google, microsoft, meta, reddit, youtube. Its much more difficult to avoid: whatsapp and maybe messenger if your family is on it. I would argue for photos and online drive, proton is good but i guess the CEO is trying to become/has become a tech bro like the others. so you have to figure out if alternatives like immich (self hosting) or other hosting providers are not fascist.
We should talk about these alternatives all the time to get them into everyday lingo such that people recommend those to others.
Sadly most people’s eyes glaze over if I mention it, so I don’t get too far. But I try!
Aside from the nonprofit makerspace that I’m a part of, which is filled with like-minded nerds, I’ve met ONE single person randomly in real life that wanted to learn more about self hosting. Sent him a brain dump of all the various services I run, topics for him to research, etc.
AI slop and the legions of uncritical adoring emoji-filled all caps comments under every garbage video is already the end of humanity. We’re done.
“The internet should be for everyone, except the people I don’t like.” - average modern internet user
Glad he’s able to call out the domain name system for the crock of shit that it is.
It’s always the fucking DNS. .__.
So I was tuning into
this guyanother person testifying to Congress the other day by the name of Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath. Supposed neuroscientist, etc. Testifying to the effects of digital learning, pads, etc.Something just rubbed me the wrong way about him. Especially when you see the likes of Ted Cruz talking him up.
Dude is heavily pushed by Moms for Liberty and “The Free Press” which we all know is a right-wing propaganda wing that gave us none other than Bari Weiss.
I think the play here may be that they want to isolate children from the broader world and being exposed to other viewpoints. My gut instinct is that they’re trying to construct the framework to justify isolationism and promote a Christo-Fascist society.
I say this as someone who thanks the internet (especially in earlier decades) for changing multiple generations of my family from rural conservative Republican to progressive-left. The same reason they attack publicly-funded news like NPR or PBS, or Big Bird and Mr. Rogers.
These things teach critical-thinking and kindness and make fearmongering less effective.
Are you talking about Berners Lee? I’m surprised, sounds like he just wants to decentralize more
No this guy.
*web inventor
The internet isn’t broken… Humanity is.
Please correct the post title: it says “internet inventor” (which is incorrect) and “soul of the web”, while the article name says “web inventor” and “soul of the internet”
“The internet” should just be dumb pipes that transport bits. Period.
Fun fact: Sneakernet has far higher bandwidth than any physical network connection. Latency suffers horrendously, but it’s not important in most cases involving such.
A series of tubes, if you will. Not a big truck.
OUR web
Can we change the title to web inventor? I am guilty of using them interchangeably as well, but he did not invent the internet. And I used the internet before the web existed lol.
Yes PLEASE! The Internet is so, so much more than the Web, it existed before it and it will exist long after the Web has been gone.
The INTERNET as a whole also has still many places that are still healthy and far away from enshittification.
Wouldn’t really help IMO. To most people (even here), “web” = “internet”.
It’s a shockingly (and relatively) small amount of people who understand that WWW ≠ TCP/IP.
