Tim Berners-Lee

The question, when it's posed like that, it implies that you really only measure people's value by their net worth. People are what they've done, what they say, what they stand for, rather than what they happen to have in the bank.

The Diane Rehm Show, “Tim Berners-Lee “Weaving the Web” (Harper San Francisco)”, (Oct 14, 1999), 1999

I don't mind there being biased information out there. The important thing is that you should know, when you're on the web, whether you're looking at biased information or not.

“The creator of the Web, TIM BERNERS-LEE” “Fresh Air”, NPR, (Sep 16, 1999), 1999

The trick... is to make sure that each limited mechanical part of the Web, each application, is within itself composed of simple parts that will never get too powerful.

1999

The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.

1999

At CERN there was a credo meant to avoid unnecessary labors, it said that when acquiring new technology: Buy, Don't Build. There were several commercial hypertext editors and I thought we could just add some internet code, so that the hypertext documents could then be sent over the internet. I thought the companies engaged in the then fringe field of hypertext would immediately grasp the possibilities of the web. Unfortunately, their reaction was quite the opposite... it seemed that explaining the vision of the web was exceedingly difficult without a web browser in hand, people had to be able to grasp the web in full, which meant imagining a whole world populated with websites and browsers. It was a lot to ask. Despite the buy don't build credo I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to create the web on my own.

1999

In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.

1999

Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.

Technology Review (July 1996), 1996

The web setting out as something which was universal, something which anybody could use, I felt was very important. It's no good having something which will run on any platform if, in fact, there is a proprietary hold on it.

"The creator of the World Wide Web, TIM BERNERS-LEE" "Fresh Air", NPR, (February 7, 1996); as quoted by Julian Ring “30 years ago, one decision altered the course of our connected world”, NPR, (April 30, 2023), 1996

Almost everything which you needed to know in your daily life was written down somewhere. And at the time, in the 1980s, it was almost certainly written down on a computer somewhere. It was very frustrating that people's effort in typing it in was not being used when, in fact, if it could only be tied together and made accessible, everything would be so much easier for everybody.

Tim Berners-Lee], "The creator of the World Wide Web, TIM BERNERS-LEE" "Fresh Air", NPR, (February 7, 1996); as quoted by Julian Ring “30 years ago, one decision altered the course of our connected world”, NPR, (April 30, 2023), 1996

Now, if someone tries to monopolize the Web, for example pushes proprietary variations on network protocols, then that would make me unhappy.

Interview by Kris Herbst for Internet World (June 1994), 1994

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.

Interview by Kris Herbst for Internet World (June 1994), 1994

This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access.

"WorldWideWeb wide-area hypertext app available" (19 August 1991), the announcement of the first WWW hypertext browser on the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.next.announce., 1991

Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.

developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee (podcast/audio plus transcript)

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da!— the World Wide Web.

Answers for Young People

I don't believe in the sort of eureka moment idea. I think it's a myth. I'm very suspicious that actually Archimedes had been thinking about that problem for a long time. And it wasn't that suddenly it came to him.

developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee (podcast/audio plus transcript)