Tim Berners-Lee Quotes

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.

The fact that we're all connected, the fact that we've got this information space — does change the parameters. It changes the way people live and work. It changes things for good and for bad. But I think, in general, it's clear that most bad things come from misunderstanding, and communication is generally the way to resolve misunderstandings — and the Web's a form of communications — so it generally should be good. But I think, also, we have to watch whether we preserve the stability of the world — like we don't want to watch this phenomenon like the stock market becoming unstable when it became computerized, for example. We need to look at the whole society and think, "Are we actually thinking about what we're doing as we go forward, and are we preserving the really important values that we have in society? Are we keeping it democratic, and open, and so on?"

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.

We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use. The passing of this threshold accelerated by allowing large existing databases to be linked together and with new ones.

Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.

The web setting out as something which was universal, something which anybody could use, I felt was very important. It's no good having something which will run on any platform if, in fact, there is a proprietary hold on it.

It is the duty of a Webmaster to allocate URIs which you will be able to stand by in 2 years, in 20 years, in 200 years.

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da!— the World Wide Web.

This snoopers charter has no place in a modern democracy - it undermines our fundamental rights online. The bulk collection of everyone's internet browsing data is disproportionate, creates a security nightmare for the ISPs who must store the data - and rides roughshod over our right to privacy. Meanwhile, the bulk hacking powers in the Bill risk making the internet less safe for everyone

I don't believe in the sort of eureka moment idea. I think it's a myth. I'm very suspicious that actually Archimedes had been thinking about that problem for a long time. And it wasn't that suddenly it came to him.

I don't mind there being biased information out there. The important thing is that you should know, when you're on the web, whether you're looking at biased information or not.

An [hypertext] encyclopaedia will be an overall attempt by the knowledgeable, the learned societies or anyone else, to represent the state-of-the-art in their field. An encyclopaedia will be a living document, as up to date as it can be, instantly accessible at any time. It will contain carefully authored explanations and summaries of the subject, as well as computer-generated indexes of literature. A reference to a paper from the encyclopaedia conveys authority and acceptance by academic society. A measure of a paper’s standing may be conveyed by the number of links it is away from an encyclopaedia.

Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.

The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.

This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access.