Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee calls for drastic changes to the internet amid concerns over data privacy, hacking, misinformation

  • Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Foundation are advocating for a universal online social contract
  • He envisions this initiative as evolving into something like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Alex Loin Toronto
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, speaks at the opening ceremony of the Web Summit technology conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, last year. Photo: Alamy

The World Wide Web, the global hyperlinked system that helped expand and transform the internet, turns 30 this year. Once the province of geeks and techies, the internet has become such a significant part of peoples’ lives, thanks to the information management structure first proposed by Tim Berners-Lee in March 1989.

But Berners-Lee, who successfully implemented that online communications system in November the same year, looks at the current state of cyberspace with both satisfaction and alarm.

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