Inventor of the World Wide Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Speaking Session:
Decentralizing the Web and Empowering Users
Thursday, June 20 @ 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Stage ASir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, will share his vision for the future of data, technology and transformation. Sir Tim will discuss enabling and establishing trust in an era when many are concerned about privacy and misuse of data. He will also discuss his new Solid project to “re-decentralize” the web and give users control of their data.
In 2017, as Web users and regulators became more concerned with the increasing power of online tech platforms and their impact on society, he wrote in The Guardian in 2017 that, “It has taken all of us to build the web we have, and now it is up to all of us to build the web we want – for everyone.” In 2018, he founded inrupt to help promote Solid, a technology built to realize his original vision for the Web.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working as a software engineer at CERN, the large particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. There, he specified the three fundamental technologies that remain the foundation of today’s Web: HTML, URL and HTTP. He also wrote the first Web page editor/browser and the first Web server. Not content to leave his creation to fate, Tim announced in 2007 the formation of the World Wide Web Foundation, confirming his commitment to ensuring an open, free Web, accessible and meaningful to all.
