Tim Berners-Lee: The Inventor of the World Wide Web

It is thanks to Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the technology that changed the world in 1989 while working at CERN, the Swiss research center for particle physics, where the London-born computer scientist proposed an information management system to help colleagues exchange information.

Berners-Lee continued to work on his idea for an information exchange system, and by 1991, the World Wide Web was ready to go live.

In 1993, Berners-Lee convinced CERN to release the Web protocol and source code to the world without any patents or fees. He attributed the immense success of the Web to this decision.

Berners-Lee remembers how things were when the Internet began 35 years ago. He told CNBC, “When it started, I didn’t expect it to be like this, such a change.”

He believes there were signs indicating that the Internet would grow significantly early on. “Traffic to the first website was increasing tenfold every year, doubling every four months,” he said.

But decades since the Web’s creation, Berners-Lee sees some negative aspects that have emerged.

For example, he believes that social media feeds designed by AI algorithms have caused people to “feel anger, frustration, or hatred.”

At the same time, the ease of producing content on social media platforms and creating new websites and blogs has led to “undermining” individuals and companies – and the loss of ownership of our data, according to the web’s founder.