Accidental Moonshot: Tim Berners-Lee and WWW

The World Wide Web was invented by accident

Author

George Pillari
February 02, 2024

Tim Berners-Lee is the computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web. Yes, he literally invented it.  The web is different from the Internet. Think of the Internet as a system of highways and roads that connects things together. In real life, we really don’t see the Internet; it’s in the background. The web is all the cool stuff we do see that is built on top of the Internet. Every website, blog, or video stream runs through the web.

Berners-Lee may have known his invention would change the world, but that is doubtful. In his autobiography, he thought the web would be a system to allow scientists to share files and use hypertext, the underlined links that we click through to see more or go to another page, to make retrieving and navigating information more efficient.

He also had a strong vision for an open web, where the free and open exchange of information would be protected and kept away from corporate or government interests that could limit the access or the information itself.

As an academic scientist, Berners-Lee wanted to improve humanity. By giving away the web, he has made information-sharing easier for billions of people. A great idea, and one that was desperately needed as society, was quickly moving into the information age in the 1980s.

When he made the decision to release the computer code and make the web “open source” and available to all, it rapidly grew into what we use today.

Berners-Lee was first driven by the desire to improve a filing system used by fellow researchers. When he realized what www.anything.com could become, he was driven to do something to change the world. He was not driven by the desire for material personal wealth.

Imagine that?

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