Tim Berners-Lee Created The Internet, Now He Wants To Fix It

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In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee was an independent contractor at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, from June to December 1980. While there, he proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. To demonstrate it, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE.

After leaving CERN in late 1980, he went to work at Image Computer Systems in the UK where he ran the company’s technical side for three years The project he worked on was a “real-time remote procedure call” which gave him experience in computer networking. In 1984, he returned to CERN as a fellow.

In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet Node in Europe and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to access it with hypertext. “I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web,” he modestly proclaims.

Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989 and implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet in mid-November. He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server and helped foster the Web’s subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web.

It’s fair to say, Tim Berners-Lee knows a thing or two about digital communications and the internet. In 1989, his vision of what the internet should be was clear. It would used by everyone, filled with everything, and it would be free. Today, his creation is used regularly by 5.5 billion people, but it has very little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.

Taking Stock Of The Internet

Speaking to The Guardian in Australia recently, he said he is thinking about what his invention has become, and how he and a community of collaborators can put the power of the web back into the hands of its users. In the beginning, his excitement about what the web could be was “uncontainable,” he says. But now, Berners-Lee and his colleagues are planning a rebellion among like-minded activists and developers that will restore the web to its original promise.

“We can fix the internet … It’s not too late,” he writes in his latest book entitled This Is For Everyone. He describes his mission as a “battle for the soul of the web.” Things started to go sideways when the domain name system became a for-profit undertaking. He believes it would have been better if it had been managed by a non-profit and operated in the public interest. He says in the 1990s the dot.com space was pounced on by “charlatans.”

Going Downhill Fast

“The Americans were very keen about commercializing the internet … crossing the boundary from being an academic thing to being a commercial thing,” he said during an interview in Brisbane.

The pursuit of profit soon became a driving force in how the internet was designed, but the extent of how that corrupted the web was not fully apparent until the 2016 US election showed him just how toxic the web had become. Two years later, he told Vanity Fair he was “devastated” by the abuses of the web.

He says a few bad actors, including X, Snapchat, and YouTube, “feed manipulation for engagement,” addiction, polarization, disinformation, and mental illness. That part of the web has been “optimized for nastiness,” he says. He calls it extractive and surveillance-heavy. [Meta should be included in that group as well.] “It’s only a small part of the whole internet … but the problem is that people spend a lot of time on [social media websites] because they’re addictive,” he says.

Humans being what they are, is the descent into darkness not inevitable? “Yes and no,” Berners-Lee says. “There used to be a sort of mantra that technology was neutral and people are good and bad. But actually, that’s not true of things on the web. The way you design a website, like Reddit, or Pinterest, or Snapchat, can be explicitly good.” Or, designed with engagement as a priority, its algorithm can be explicitly bad, he says.

Personal Data Privacy

Monopolization by companies like Facebook and Google is bad for innovation and bad for the web, he says, because monopolies get in the way of building systems that are truly pro-human. To get a start on fixing the problem he sees with the web, Berners-Lee wants to change the way data is held on the web into what he calls a Solid (social linked data) protocol to promote people power — similar to the way things were in the early years of the web.

This new version of the internet would prioritize personal sovereignty and return control to those who use the web. “When people are excited, they get a twinkle in their eye and they start coding just because of what they can imagine,” Berners-Lee says about developers who “get” the concept.

He says Solid “pods” are like backpacks of data that are securely held by each individual, allowing them to choose what to share with which people, businesses, and organizations. Department of Education data could be shared with an AI tutor; medical data could be shared with a cousin, doctor, or nutritionist. The Flanders government in Belgium treats data as a national utility and is already using Solid pods for its citizens.

The Facebooks and Xs of the world need not join in — the new systems will be so empowering, collaborative, and compassionate, he believes, that parts of today’s web will become obsolete. “The existing systems will fade to a certain extent, because people will get more excited in new systems,” he claims. “Being able to collaborate across the world with friends and family and colleagues will be something that they end up getting addicted to — a much better form of addiction.”

Young People & The Web

Berners-Lee is curious how the approach Australia has taken by blocking the ability of young people to access sites such as Snapchat, X, Facebook, and YouTube will work. “I’m interested to see how it goes down in Australia, because there are people in the UK who are proposing it in a similar way, and others may follow on. The first question is whether kids should be using those particular social media sites. I think you have to recognize that things like messaging services are useful.”

He prefers specially designed smartphones that block access to harmful sites for children. The Other phone, designed in collaboration with Mumsnet users, is an alternative to devices that allow unfettered access to social media, he suggests.

The AI Swamp

Berners-Lee believes AI has the potential to transform society far beyond the boundaries of self-interested companies. But now is the time to put guardrails in place so that AI remains a force for good. Companies like xAI and others will be vehemently opposed to that idea. Elon Musk is a self-described “free speech absolutist,” which means he thinks it is perfectly OK for Grok to suggest to a young boy that he supply a nude picture of himself. Berners-Lee says he is concerned the chance to tame the worst behavior of AI may have already passed humanity by.

“The horse is bolting,” he says. “I would like to see a CERN for AI … where all the top scientists come together and see whether they can make a super intelligence. And, if they can, they contain it into a system where it can’t just go out and persuade people to let it run the world.” He admits that achieving that goal is very nearly out of reach.

“We have got AI being done in these huge companies, but also in these huge silos. They’re not looking over each other’s shoulder. They’re just sitting there, inside their own company, looking at their own system, trying to make it smarter. I don’t see a way that we can get to a point where the scientific community gets to look at the AI and to decide whether it is safe or not.”

Who Decides?

The question is, who gets to decide what is “safe” and for how long? Tim Berners-Lee is correct about many of the negative aspects and dangers of the digital world as it is today, but he is a scientist. He does not spend his days plotting how to steal elections, or smear opponents, or make a jillion dollars from manipulating people’s emotions.

Do his ideas seem reasonable and realistic to you? We value the opinions of our readers and look forward to what you have to say on this topic.