Missing Link: Tim Berners-Lee turns 70 – the architect of the World Wide Web
The man who gave us the WWW celebrates his 70th birthday and continues to fight for a free web. A look at his technical legacy and his current plans.
(Image: drserg/Shutterstock)
Happy 70th birthday, Sir Tim! And yes, many readers owe it to you, among others, that the first thing they did this morning was squint at their smartphones, click through social networks, study the news on their computers or get lost in the vastness of Wikipedia. Because without Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web (WWW), who celebrates his 70th birthday today, none of this would exist. Or at least not as we know it. During his time at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva at the end of the 1990s, the unpretentious Brit laid the foundations for a global network that has fundamentally changed our world with a few lines of code and an ingenious idea. An achievement that is all too easily forgotten in the frenzy of apps and algorithms.
In today's world, one technical innovation rolls over the next. But even in this world, there are pioneers whose work is so fundamental that we barely notice it. Because it is simply there, omnipresent and indispensable for many. The name Berners-Lee is probably unfamiliar to many. However, his creation permeates almost every facet of networked life. Born in London in 1955, he is a quiet revolutionary. He is not the founder of Google, Facebook or Apple. But he is the man who laid the foundations for these large Internet companies to exist at all.
It's easy to get lost in the jungle of data octopuses and algorithms and forget who once laid the foundations for an important part of our digital universe. Berners-Lee is not a dazzling tech mogul like Elon Musk or a media superstar like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. He is the architect of an open and free digital world, who continues to fight tirelessly for his convictions to this day. And this struggle is far from over for him at the age of 70.
The beginnings: HTTP, HTML and the first browser
It was March 12, 1989, when Sir Tim put a seemingly inconspicuous document on the table at CERN: "Information Management: A Proposal". Little did his employer know at the time what an avalanche this paper would set off. Specifically, his boss, Mike Sendall, commented succinctly on the proposal as "Vague but exciting." Quite an understatement, as it later turned out. The idea was born: a hypertext-based system that would revolutionize the global exchange and updating of information between scientists.
A year later, in 1990, the physicist, together with his colleague, the Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau, put this vision into concrete terms in a concept for a genuine, worldwide hypertext project: the computer program Enquire was the nucleus of what we know today as the World Wide Web.
It can hardly be emphasized often enough: Berners-Lee not only developed the theoretical foundations of the WWW. He also provided the blueprints and built the first prototypes himself. With the HTTP protocol (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), he created the language with which web servers and browsers communicate. With HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), he defined the format in which websites are written. And with the first web browser and editor, known simply as "WorldWideWeb", he laid the foundations for the graphical user interface we know today. He developed the first web server CERN httpd under the operating system NeXTStep on a NeXTcube computer.
Not all great inventions need patents
The important thing is that the software developer did not keep his invention to himself. CERN released the web to the public in April 1993 and waived patents and license fees. A decision that cannot be overestimated in view of today's monopolization tendencies on the web. The web was to be an open and free system, accessible to all and usable by all. A counter-design to commercial online services such as Compuserve or AOL, which dominated the landscape at the time.
Berners-Lee's commitment did not end with the birth of the web. Since then, he has fought tirelessly for its original ideals. As founder and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he oversees the technical standards of the web. There, too, he upholds the maxim of only adopting patent-free standards. Sir Tim is also a vehement advocate of net neutrality, the freedom of information flow and the protection of privacy in the digital space. He criticizes the concentration of power among tech giants, the collection and exploitation of personal data and censorship on the internet.
Solid as a counter-model to surveillance capitalism
His latest project, Solid (Social Linked Data), aims to give users back control over their own data – a decentralized vision as an alternative to today's cloud monopolization. At the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin in 2023, for example, Sir Tim presented his idea for the further development of the World Wide Web to a wider audience. Decentralized concepts are central for him. The idea behind Solid, the open source platform he initiated, is that every user manages their data in personal storage (pods) and decides for themselves which applications or services have access to it. This is intended to offer an alternative to the model of data storage and use by central providers.
The inventor founded the startup Inrupt to implement Solid. The company aims to develop a global "single sign-on" function that allows anyone to log in to web services from anywhere. The creator is also working on opening up data silos. In July 2024, Inrupts published the "Data Wallet", an important core function for a universal infrastructure for digital wallets. The specifications for Solid continue to be standardized in parallel as part of a working group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In a Belgian pilot project, citizens in Belgium can already use pods to store and share educational diplomas for job applications. Experts also see potential for the system in the healthcare sector.
Criticism of the "Web3 stuff"
In 2022, Sir Tim made it clear that he does not consider the decentralized database technology blockchain to be the most viable solution for building the next generation of the internet. "Ignore the Web3 stuff," he advised the audience at the Web Summit in Lisbon. The computer scientist described it as a "real shame" that "the Ethereum people" had adopted the already existing term Web3 "for the things" they were "doing with blockchain". In reality, this form of Web3 is "not the web at all".
Berners-Lee complained that many observers were confusing the relevant blockchain technologies with the broader concept of "Web 3.0", which he helped to coin. Its original approach was to create a semantic web that is enriched with data that can be read and processed by machines. The Web3 initiative, on the other hand, is based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), which includes blockchain, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
The father of the web is not a fundamental enemy of blockchain applications. In 2021, he had his original WWW source code auctioned off as an NFT by Sotheby's auction house. He signed the files with the original timestamps. The auction for the digital artwork raised 5.43 million US dollars, which was donated to charitable initiatives. Sir Tim is also pragmatic when it comes to the current hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI): he has nothing against its use to tackle the problems of the next generation, for example. However, it is also important to him that privacy can be maintained.
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A life's work in the name of openness
The WWW architect recently parted with one of his babies: after 15 years, he closed down the World Wide Web Foundation he founded in the fall. It aimed to stand up for an Internet that is "secure, trustworthy and efficient for everyone".
Through the foundation, Berners-Lee primarily promoted his 2018 idea of creating a new social contract for the web. The "Magna Charta" was intended to help combat grievances such as hatred, state hacking and cybercrime by building strong online communities. It was also aimed at business models based around disinformation. The German government backed this pact in2018. The final version was the focus of the UN's Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin in 2019, where Sir Tim emphasized the need to put the web back on track as a force for good. Principles from this were incorporated into the Declaration on the Future of the Internet, which the USA and the EU published together with partners in 2022.
At the age of 70, Berners-Lee is still one of the most important moral authorities in the digital world. He is living proof that it is worth fighting for the ideals of openness and freedom, especially in times when these are increasingly under attack.
(nie)
