Sir Timothy Berners-Lee Interview (page: 8 / 8) Father of the World Wide Web	Print Interview

You've been recognized with so many honors: the Quadriga Award, the Millennium Technology Prize, honorary degrees, knighthood. How do you yourself measure achievement?

Timothy Berners-Lee: I have never liked to put people on a scale. I don't think it's helpful. I think that people are all wonderful. They all have different talents. They all have something to contribute. I've worked with people who contribute in very different ways. Some of them have contributed in a very introverted fashion, getting one piece of the system working. Others have done it in a very extraverted system: motivating, blogging, speaking, traveling all over the world, trying to get people to move just in a particular direction. It 's a very complicated system. So I'm dubbed the "Inventor of the World Wide Web." So the role I have to play is to speak for the web, to speak about what it is like to be the inventor of the World Wide Web, to encourage people to study computer science and physics and math, and to point out that it is really, really exciting, really, really fun, and that it's only just beginning. I've got these roles. They're not necessarily roles that I'm particularly good at. What I actually did was write a program that happened to work. Okay, so I think it's really important. One message for people out there is that...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I'm just an ordinary person. Okay? I wrote this program fairly late in life compared to some people, compared to piano prodigies. I'm just an ordinary person with ordinary faults, who's difficult to talk to on Monday mornings when they're grumpy and things. I have lots of problems remembering people's names and turning up at appointments on time. I'll get distracted easily, especially if there is some programming going on in the vicinity. So everybody is just a person. We're all just a person. I think we're all, if you like, we're all divine in some way. We've all got that. We've all got sparks. We're all very, very special. So I don't want to explain what it's like to be special, because I'm not more special than anybody else.

When bright young people come to you for advice, what do you say to them?

Timothy Berners-Lee: I don't know really. I suppose I could try all kinds of potted aphorisms, sort of "stay off drugs" sort of thing. Maybe in this interview, quite a lot has come through, that math and physics are fun. Mostly, I think I would have to listen to them. I would have to find out who they are and where they're coming from, because you can't really advise somebody or explain anything to anybody until you understand where they're coming from.

Let's put it in a different way. If you were making a commencement speech this week, what would you emphasize?

Timothy Berners-Lee: Okay. If I'm put on the spot and forced to make general remarks to people irrespective of where they come from, I suppose one of the things that people perhaps don't realize, particularly with this "Inventor of the Web" title, is that it's all been about people, it's all been about collaboration. Originally, the web technology was to enable collaboration. Everything I did at CERN was in collaboration with other people. The most exciting thing about it has not been, in fact, the technology at all. It's been the people I've been working with. It's been the spirit of collaboration.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. When, initially, the thing was released on the Internet, it went out in various obscure news groups, e-mail messages, and I got messages back from people I didn't know at all, on completely different continents and islands, saying that they had installed a web server or a new web browser. It helped in some way. Introducing themselves with two lines and just joining in with lots of enthusiasm, lots of creativity, and with their own very special different way of looking at life, and with their own motivations. That has been really, really exciting. When people like that have got together face to face, it's been electric. The World Wide Web conferences we have -- now the Semantic Web Conferences as well -- have just got a tremendous energy about them. So doing this thing, doing this web science, is about building a huge system together, and that spirit of collaboration -- international collaboration -- has been by far the most exciting thing.

Looking ahead at the 21st Century, what most concerns you?

Timothy Berners-Lee: I suppose the biggest threat, if I have to name something, its some organization taking control of the system, some organization getting between the arbitrary person browsing the web and the arbitrary resource and restricting who they can talk to. At the moment, the web's an open space. You can put up a film, and anybody can go browse it. If somebody tries to go to a site and look at a movie, for example, and then their Internet provider says, "Oh no. Sorry. We sell you movies separately. Because we sell you movies, we don't want you to go to that site." Or actually, "We're worried about your children. So we don't want you to see sites of that religion, because we feel that religion could be harmful to them," or perhaps, "We don't want you to see sites from that particular political debate because we don't think that it shows our party very well." You can see how, whether it is a government organization or a commercial organization, once somebody manages to control that information flow on the planet -- that is so valuable, it is really important that we keep it open, keep it neutral, that it must be managed with just public good as the goal, by people who are dedicated to keeping it neutral.

What would you have your legacy be? How do you want to be remembered?

Timothy Berners-Lee: How would I want to be remembered? As just a person. I think it's important to remember that I'm just an ordinary person. I was just a programmer. I wrote a program. It happened to work. This could happen to you.

We're very grateful to you for taking the time to talk with us. It was wonderful.

Timothy Berners-Lee: You're welcome.

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