The World Wide Web turned 30 years old yesterday. When Tim Berners-Lee came up with what he thought would be a global system for knowledge and data sharing among research institutions three decades ago, it wasn’t called the World Wide Web; it was just “Mesh.” The WWW project was ambitious and exciting from the start, yes, but even its inventor could hardly have envisioned the subsequent explosion of the web’s use for private and commercial purposes.
Tim Berners-Lee continues to play a role in steering the development of the web via the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets universal standards like HTML5, and the World Wide Web Foundation, which advocates for a free and open web. As a supporter of net neutrality, Berners-Lee can most often be seen leveraging his celebrity to push governments and international organizations to preserve the web’s original collaborative spirit.