Berners-Lee starts foundation aimed at Web's future

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, will launch a new foundation focused on extending the capabilities of the Web and bringing the Internet to all the world's people, he announced Sunday.

The World Wide Web Foundation, scheduled to launch early next year, will "advance a Web which is open and free," Berners-Lee said at a Washington, D.C., event. The foundation will promote democracy, free speech and the freedom of Internet users to access the online content they want, he said. (See 10 ways the Chinese Internet is different from yours).

In addition, a major focus of the foundation will be to provide Web access to the 80% of the world's population that is not currently connected to the Internet, Berners-Lee said. "It will extend capability of the Web to everyone on the planet," said Berners-Lee, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It will try to."

Berners-Lee acknowledged the goals he outlined are a "very big undertaking," but he said it's important for the Web to benefit humanity as a whole, not just executives who want the latest pocket device.

Anticipating questions about what he envisions for the foundation and the Web's future, Berners-Lee said his ideas were limited. The next generation of Internet users should think of the Web as a blank canvas, he said.

"If we can accomplish everything I can think of, we'll have failed," he added.

Berners-Lee mentioned two goals for the Web in the future: to advance and create new forms of democracy, including meritocracies, and to help improve health care. The Web Foundation will also focus on Web standards and interoperability and on advancing Web science, he said.

The Knight Foundation, focused on improving journalism in the U.S., will provide $5 million in seed money to help launch the Web Foundation. The Web is an important tool for journalism and freedom of speech and the press, said Alberto Ibarguen, the Knight Foundation's president and CEO.

Berners-Lee said he had doubts about trying to push the Web out to the most remote areas of the world, when many people need basic health-care, food and clean water. People in the Web-connected part of the world need to understand others' needs "before we make rash assessments," he said.

But an African missionary told him a story about a man there who taught himself English by reading the Bible and other texts, then offered his services as an interpreter over the Web. The man could bring money to his village through the Web, Berners-Lee said.

Berners-Lee invented the hypertexted Web in 1989, while working as a software programmer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first Web client and server in 1990, and he created the HTML and HTTP protocols.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.