Web Inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, Creates Foundation To Improve Web

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Founder of the Web, today announced the formation of the new World Wide Web Foundation which seeks to:

1. to advance One Web that is free and open
2. to expand the Web’s capability and robustness
3. to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet

The Web Foundation will reach its objectives by funding projects around the world through the following strategically integrated programs: Web Science and Research, Web Technology and Practice, and Web for Society.

In an interview with the BBC, Berners-Lee said:

Alongside this role it will aim to make it easier for people to get online. Currently only 20% of the world’s population have access to the web.

“Has it been designed by the West for the West?” asked Sir Tim.

“Has it been designed for the executive and the teenager in the modern city with a smart phone in their pocket? If you are in a rural community do you need a different kind of web with different kinds of facilities?”

The Web Foundation will also explore ways to make the web more mobile-phone friendly. That would increase its use in Africa and other poor parts of the world where there are few computers but plenty of handsets.

The Foundation will also look at how the benefits of the web can be taken to those who cannot read or write.

“We’re talking about the evolution of the web,” he said. “Perhaps by using gestures or pointing. When something is such a creative medium as the web, the limits to it are our imagination”.

The Foundation will also look at concerns that the web has become less democratic, and its use influenced too much by large corporations and vested interests.

“I think that question is very important and may be settled in the next few years,” said Sir Tim.

“One of the things I always remain concerned about is that that medium remains neutral,” he said.

“It’s not just where I go to decide where to buy my shoes which is the commercial incentive – it’s where I go to decide who I’m going to trust to vote,” he said.

“It’s where I go maybe to decide what sort of religion I’m going to belong to or not belong to; it’s where I go to decide what is actual scientific truth – what I’m actually going to go along with and what is bunkum”.