World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee on the fight for the web’s future

Published in GeekWire | June 7, 2016

GeekWire Interview: World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee on the fight for the web’s future

By Todd Bishop

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, emerged from an elevator into the lobby of his Seattle hotel Sunday morning, making his way past a small crowd of people and out the door for a quick run. Despite the pervasive impact of his invention on everyone in the room, and people across the world, no one recognized him or gave him a second look, except for the journalists waiting to interview him when he returned.

The scene demonstrated the low profile purposefully maintained by Berners-Lee, the 60-year-old computer scientist who created the web on a single NeXT computer more than 25 years ago. But his story, and the story of the web, are in the spotlight in a new documentary film, foreveryone.net, which made its official world premiere Sunday at the Seattle International Film Festival.

The film makes the case for web users to understand the significance of issues such as net neutrality and the importance of an open and unified web. It also focuses on Berners-Lee’s push to elevate Internet access to the status of fundamental human right.

Read edited transcripts here, or watch the full interview below.