Today is the 30th Anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web (WWW) by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. (Sorry Al Gore; not you)
Sir Tim Berners-Lee was a young computer expert working at CERN and wanted to combine ideas about accessing information with a desire for broad connectivity and openness. His proposal became the World Wide Web.
In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that they easily could be adopted by anyone.
In June 2009, then-British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced that Berners-Lee would work with the UK government to help make data more open and accessible on the Web, building on the work of the Power of Information Task Force.[49] Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt are the two key figures behind data.gov.uk, a UK government project to open up almost all data acquired for official purposes for free re-use. Commenting on the opening up of Ordnance Survey data in April 2010, Berners-Lee said that: "The changes signal a wider cultural change in government based on an assumption that information should be in the public domain unless there is a good reason not to—not the other way around." He went on to say: "Greater openness, accountability and transparency in Government will give people greater choice and make it easier for individuals to get more directly involved in issues that matter to them."[50]
In November 2009, Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web Foundation in order to "advance the Web to empower humanity by launching transformative programs that build local capacity to leverage the Web as a medium for positive change."[51]
Berners-Lee is one of the pioneer voices in favour of net neutrality,[52] and has expressed the view that ISPs should supply "connectivity with no strings attached", and should neither control nor monitor the browsing activities of customers without their expressed consent.[53][54] He advocates the idea that net neutrality is a kind of human network right: "Threats to the internet, such as companies or governments that interfere with or snoop on internet traffic, compromise basic human network rights."[55] Berners-Lee participated in an open letter to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He and 20 other Internet pioneers urged the FCC to cancel a vote on 14 December 2017 to uphold net neutrality. The letter was addressed to Senator Roger Wicker, Senator Brian Schatz, Representative Marsha Blackburn and Representative Michael F. Doyle.[56]
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