The launch a year ago was just the start of working with organizations and people around the world on technology and policy issues to help ensure the Web will remain “for everyone” into the future. Here are some of the highlights:

• We collaborated with the Webby Awards on the Webbys 25 for 25, a collection of essays, art projects, films, and Web mementos.
• The Web Foundation launched the Web We Want movement to bring people together from around the world to defend, claim and change a Web that is for everyone. This has included putting together the world’s first Web We Want Festival series with London’s Southbank centre - the closing weekend is 28-30 May 2015.
• In April 2014, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff signed the first Internet Bill of Rights —the Marco Civil da Internet— into law.
• In August 2014, Tim Berners-Lee gave a TED talk where he called for a “Magna Carta for the Web”
• In October 2014, W3C celebrated its 20th anniversary at a Symposium on the Future of the Web, including presentations from Vint Cerf, US FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, Fadi Chehadé, Darren Walker and many other luminaries.
• In December 2015, the WF announced the 2014-2015 edition of the Web Index, which measures the Web’s contribution to social, economic and political progress in countries across the world. At the launch, Sir Tim Berners-Lee called for the Internet to be recognized as a basic human right.
• In February 2015, US FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced proposed rules supportive of net neutrality, which the WF hailed as great news even as there remains more work to do.

The webat25.org archive has a lot more from the year of activities.

We would like to thank all of the Web25 sponsors who supported this work: the Ford Foundation, ICANN, Intel XDK, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Twitter, and Yahoo!

With this post we are “freezing” this site. But the work is not done to ensure the Web remains available to all. We invited you to follow the Web Foundation news and W3C news and, more importantly, get involved in ensuring the Web of tomorrow is the Web We Want!

In this short film, US Digital Ambassador Daniel Sepulveda offers some perspectives on the importance of this goal, and how we might meet the challenge.

Last March we launched this site, kicking off a year-long celebration of the Web’s 25th birthday, which will culminate in an Anniversary Symposium and gala dinner on 29 October in Santa Clara (USA), to focus on potential and challenges of the future Web.

Last March in Vancouver, Tim Berners-Lee gave a TED Talk: A Magna Carta for the web, that was just released by the TED conference. Enjoy!

I will leave you with the conclusion of Tim’s talk (the emphasis is mine):

What sort of web do you want? I want one which is not fragmented into lots of pieces, as some countries have been suggesting they should do in reaction to recent surveillance. I want a web which is, for example, a really good basis for democracy. I want a web where I can use healthcare with privacy and where there’s a lot of health data, clinical data is available to scientists to do research. I want a web where the other 60 percent get on board as fast as possible. I want a web which is such a powerful basis for innovation that when something nasty happens, some disaster strikes, that we can respond by building stuff to respond to it very quickly.

So this is just some of the things that I want, from a big list, obviously it’s longer. You have your list. I want us to use this 25th anniversary to think about what sort of a web we want. You can go to webat25.org and find some links. There are lots of sites where people have started to put together a Magna Carta, a bill of rights for the web. How about we do that? How about we decide, these are, in a way, becoming fundamental rights, the right to communicate with whom I want. What would be on your list for that Magna Carta? Let’s crowdsource a Magna Carta for the web. Let’s do that this year. Let’s use the energy from the 25th anniversary to crowdsource a Magna Carta to the web. (Applause)

Thank you. And do me a favor, will you? Fight for it for me. Okay? Thanks.

Inspired by the World Wide Web Foundation and working in partnership with the Foundation’s ‘Web We Want’ global campaign for a free, open and universal Web, the festival will be an extensive celebration of how the Web has changed our lives. It will also explore some of the things that threaten the web as we know it and what solutions there might be. The first weekend takes place from 26 – 28 September.

Mirroring Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the web as a place for equality, we’re asking everyone - local and distant community groups, neighbours and strangers, techies and technophobes, old and young, urban and rural, with any level of web-literacy - to create the content.

To do this, we are asking everybody to answer these five questions:

1. What Web projects have you encountered that leap borders or conventional approaches to change people’s lives? #WebInspire
2. What do you think are the best examples of creativity and artistic imagination on the Web? #WebCreate
3. What examples of personal, corporate or government online action threatens the future of a free, open and universal Web? #OpenWeb
4. What aspects of the Web give you the greatest joy and the greatest worry? #WebJoy #WebWorry
5. What ideas, projects or schemes would you suggest we present at the festival to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Web? #MyWebIdea

 
You can answer these on social media or write to: Web We Want Festival, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. The deadline for ideas for the September weekend is 29 August 2014, but keep ideas coming until May 2015.

Twitter - https://twitter.com/webwewantfest #WebWeWantFest
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/SouthbankCentre
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/southbankcentre
 
Anyone can contribute, all contributions will be treated equally, and you can answer the questions as many times as you like and on behalf of other people, with their permission.

Email webwewant@southbankcentre.co.uk with any questions.

What’s Next?

Your content will come to life online and across three real life festival weekends at Southbank Centre - 26-28 September 2014, 28-30 November 2014 and 29-31 May 2015 - curated by Southbank Centre and World Wide Web Foundation.

Keep checking back to Web We Want festival site, social media and our Tumblr page  for updates.

Please share this invitation to anyone you think might be interested in contributing.

We are looking forward to hearing from you, and seeing you for the first installment of the Web We Want Festival in September.

W3C today announced the program and opened registration for W3C20 Anniversary Symposium: The Future of the Web, which takes place 29 October in Santa Clara, California. Confirmed speakers are:

• Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the Web and W3C Director
• Vinton Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google
• Fadi Chehadé, Chief Executive Officer of ICANN
• David-Michel Davies, Executive Director, The Webby Awards & the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences
• Di-Ann Eisnor, Head of Platforms and Partnerships, Community Geographer at Waze
• Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation
• Alberto Ibargüen, President and CEO, Knight Foundation
• Jun Murai, Dean and Professor at Keio University
• Sandy Pentland, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT
• Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project
• Anders Wahlquist, CEO and Founding Partner of B-Reel

Read the media advisory for more information.

When the hypermedia community first started talking about the Web as a
concept and started to think about what it might become, few of us
(perhaps with the exception of Tim himself) imagined we would be
sitting in Seoul 25 years later with over a thousand Web experts and
users gathered from around the world thinking about the immeasurable
impact the Web has had on society in virtually all its forms. I doubt
that even Tim would have dared to hope that the topic for our
discussion would have been what we can expect from another 25 years of
the Web.

More than just a discussion about a technical innovation, I was
delighted to chair a panel as part of the 25th birthday celebration
that included social scientists, government specialists and business
visionaries along with the father of the Web and one or two of its
favourite aunts and uncles.

As government, business, health, education, academia and just about
everything becomes web-based, web-centric or web-mediated we need,
more than ever, to promote powerful tools/techniques underpinning a
robust science of the Web to understand what this means for humanity
and to ensure we know how to curate what may be a fragile resource in
turbulent times.

I was joined by Tim Berners-Lee and Jim Hendler (both well know
luminaries of the Web, Open Data and Semantic technologies), Mary
Ellen Zurko a long-time security and Web expert, Yong Ham Kim eminent
Sociologist, Unna Huh a well-known figure in Korean government and
social policy and Prabhakar Raghavan a leading technical figure at
Google. Whilst space, of course, forbids a word-for-word reportage of
the fascinating Q&A that lasted more than hour, I can share with you
some of the key themes that were surprisingly similar across the range
of panellists in response to a deceptively simple question: What
will the Web be like in 25 years?

The Web We Want

For those growing up as part of iGen (the iPhone, iPad generation) the
Web may become completely transparent - something they cannot conceive
of living without though we should be clear that taking the Web for
granted may not be a good idea. It is becoming increasingly difficult
to live without the Web and should that happen one day we may not be
prepared for the consequences.

In many ways the key question is not what WILL the Web be like but
rather what is the “Web We Want” - an unashamed pun on WWW - in
another 25 years? If the Web gives us the ability to share information
or even spy on each other, who would we rather spy on us: people we
know and trust or people we don’t know and perhaps cannot trust?
Whilst, for example, we are seeing growing support for a right to
access the net (recently in Brazil and the EU) we should not take open
access to the Web for granted and if required we must be prepared to
fight to keep the Web open and accessible.

Decentralising the Web

Certain aspects of the Web (such as the reliance on DNS) are
centralised today because at the time, 25 years ago, it made sense to
re-use existing scalable standard Internet services.  In countries
where this sort of infrastructure is not well-established, newer ways
of implementing the Web such as spread spectrum mesh technologies
could be an alternative. However we implement services we should make
the distinction between the service delivery and the control of access
and content i.e. centralising servers is not the same as centralising
our control and our interface with the Web through a few “mega-sites”
or a small number of “megaproviders”.

We shouldn’t forget that huge innovation has been driven by the Web
via decentralised communities who have created new data, new
technologies and services. We must consider, given what the research
says about power laws in networks, that decentralising the Web (i.e.
changing the natural structure) may be difficult. We must ensure that
the standards and research support this possibility and that the
non-technical (social) pieces and policies are included.

Connectivity

Connectivity will mean a connection to everyone and everything and
perhaps the ability to rewind and review these interactions to see
“who was right”. Whilst this may bring many positive benefits and
opportunities, connectivity is not always positive and we may see new
types of attacks, not only from anonymous parties but the Web as a
platform for attacks from friends and family.

Doubtless apps will continue to be created to “scam” us for
information, money and other ways to exploit us and as Trust becomes
increasingly important in a highlyconnected/automated world we may
need to crowd-source elements of security and trust.

A Social view of the Web

After a healthy dose of scepticism from social scientists at the
outset, the Web has become a key tool, not only for modelling and
understanding existing social interactions, (many argue that the Web
is socially-constructed rather than simply a technological artefact)
but also for studying new ones such as the “global digital divide” - a
proxy for differences in information, education and
opportunity. Current research shows a high level of correlation
between age + educational level and Internet usage. With such
differences in the amount and quality of access across the planet it
is unclear if the Web will decrease the digital divide or accelerate
it.

Internet and Web policy at the government level

Many fast growing economies (including S. Korea) have placed the Web
at the core of their strategic plans. By leveraging improved
information access and eLearning tools such as MOOCs, the current
education system itself could be replaced by the Web in 25 years with
standardised content being replaced by personalised learning
objectives and flexible delivery.  This carries important questions
about the role of teaching at universities and schools and whether the
focus will move from information delivery to
guidance/assessment. Ultra-fast does not necessarily mean ultra-smart
and retaining the wisdom that is built from information and knowledge
must remain at the forefront of our educational policy.

Social Machines

If we are to achieve successful social models based on Web
technologies we must educate our political leaders on the strengths
and weaknesses of the Web and how we can address each of these, not
only for education but as part of a digital democracy and newer forms
of interaction between citizens and leaders - something the Koreans
are calling Government 3.0. Others (most recently at this conference)
have referred to Government as a socalled Social Machine (a term
coined by Tim to denote the interaction between society and technology
to deliver solutions in the real world) and naturally there can hardly
be an understanding of social machines without an understanding of the
social element. Thus social scientists must work more closely with
technologists to foster deep interdisciplinary understanding -
something that lies at the heart of Web Science a discipline which
makes an appearance as main research track at WWW for the first time
this year as well running its own successful conferences since 1995.

The Invisible Web

Increasingly the Web is becoming an implied or even invisible service
- even to developers and technologists. Application developers tend
not to explicitly think about TCP/IP, RAM or power and increasingly
they also simply assume the Web is “simply there” and as this happens
the use of the Web via browsers will increasingly give way to other
forms of interaction and Web clients such as mobile devices, hybrid
wearable devices such as Google Glass and even implanted
devices. Without the need or availability of keyboards and mice to
interact with these devices, attention is likely to turn back to
problems such as NLP (natural language processing), motion/gesture
interfaces and other bio information sources. To do this, large bodies
of data and powerful analytics such as IBM’s powerful Watson
architecture will be needed to ensure the interfaces are reliable and
usable.

Do You Speak Web?

Increasingly the split of languages on the Web is shifting towards
non-english content reflecting the diversity of language and culture
across the Web. Whilst rapid and effective processing of language may
soon be within reach, we are much further away from understanding the
semantics and culture of natural language of users across the
Web. Indeed a clear line should be drawn between specific contextual
tools like automatic translation of restaurant menus or road signs
from a foreign language from the attempt to translate deeper levels of
artistic or cultural content beyond a basic understanding. A
homogenisation of language culture is something we should be aware of
and actively avoid in the Web to come.

Big Data, Personal Data and Easy Access

Watson (or perhaps one of its descendants) is likely to have an
increasingly important role in service delivery for government,
education and health. One of the panellists who works with the IBM
Watson team commented that he sees all doctors being advised by Watson
in just a few years but that he wouldn’t want Watson as his only
doctor for a few years yet!  We see the need to harness the power of
the Web and Big Data into accessible platforms and communities that
can be used by anyone and not just domain experts or technology
experts.  We can imagine creating systems like the enormously
successful Zooniverse citizen science platforms with the ease of
creating a WordPress site.

The nature of personal data and privacy is being changed by the Web
and the need to keep control of our personal data will become
paramount in a future Web where so many aspects and details of our
lives are captured as data. With so many companies amassing huge
amounts of data for future purposes unclear even to themselves, we
should consider the ethics and implications of Big Data as much as we
consider the benefits.

Access and Impact in the Digital Divide

We have achieved great strides in just a few years with the percentage
of the world’s population who are on the Web doubling from 20% to 40%
in a few short years. This, however, still leaves us with the question
of the 60% who are not on the Web. We must consider not only the raw
access but particularly the impact of the Web as being the key issue
here. The Web Index, for example, seeks to assess this impact across
diverse perspectives such as education, business and politics on a
global scale to understand whether access alone is enough without the
right kind of enablement through education.

Web Impacts can also be negative through crime or exploitation and we
need to be mindful of the ethical values and judgement skills that we
impart to our children beyond the technical skills to access the Web -
these may be no different to parenting and teaching skills in use
today but they will need to be underpinned by a level of understanding
of the risks and pitfalls that accompany the tremendous opportunities
on the Web.

Summary

I am delighted to report that the Web is indeed alive and kicking on
its 25th Birthday and that Tim’s “baby” has grown up.

“The Web is not a baby any more - it’s all grown up with rights and
responsibilities of its own” - Tim Berners-Lee

I am indebted to the amazing panel that joined us in Seoul and hope
that I have managed to give you a flavour of the panel discussion: any
errors in summarising the panel’s words are my own.

Prof. Dame Wendy Hall, University of Southampton

Here’s an excerpt from the piece: 

“Young people are leveraging broadband to innovate. Less than 10 years ago, you would not have found the words “Africa” and “innovation” in the same sentence, but now new applications have changed this and Africa is truly making major contributions globally.”

To read the full article, please click here.

At the launch, Sir Tim was joined on stage by Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre. Jude and Tim discussed and debated the future of the Web with an audience of artists, thinkers, makers, media and youth representatives.

Sir Tim said:

“The future of the Web depends on ordinary people discussing it, taking responsibility for it and challenging those who seek to control the Web for their own purposes. The first step is to answer one simple question: what kind of Web do we want?  Southbank Centre’s festival will make an important contribution to building – from the ground up – a global, participatory movement where ordinary people can discuss, debate, and have their say.  It is vitally important to me and our work at the World Wide Web Foundation that we empower people from all walks of life to shape the future of the Web.”

More information on the Festival is available on the Southbank Centre website and a full press release is here.

“Twenty-five years ago, when the Internet had been running for 20 years, there was internet mail and net news and remote login, but there was no web.  No web sites, web pages, links. So I invented the World Wide Web. As the project grew, I needed collaborators. To achieve that I went to the Internet technical community.

Specifically, I founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a multistakeholder organization that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web. W3C works on different aspects of Internet technology with numerous organizations, including the Internet Engineering Task Force, ECMA/TC39, IANA, and ICANN.

Hopefully you all agree that we have done a reasonable job.  The Web, and its underlying Internet infrastructure have been an enormous engine of growth and understanding for society. It has been the collaboration between these multistakeholder organizations which has made this possible.

Our technical community achieved this contribution with little oversight from governments.  In fact, our “OpenStand” vision is that the right way to build a technical infrastructure for society is through multi-stakeholder technical groups where decisions are made in the public interest and based on technical merit. Discussion is open. Documents are available for free on the web.  In W3C specifically, companies commit that as the standard emerges they will not charge royalties to those who implement it.

The web needs to remain a system which exists without regard to national borders. Today most of the work is already done in the non-national Internet technical community. I was also pleased to hear that ICANN is beginning a dialog to create a multi-stakeholder review process to replace that of the US Government. That is appropriate because ICANN services the global public interest.

For me, that means that when a decision is taken about a possible new top-level domain, ICANN’s job is to work out, in a transparent and accountable manner, whether it is really in the best interest of the world as a whole, not just of those launching the new domain.

It also means that that ICANN’s use of the funds should be spent in a beneficent way; such as supporting standardization, security hardening, and internationalization of the technology; accessibility, and closing the digital divide.

The Internet has thrived by the collective empowerment of capable, public-spirited people:  initially, from the technical community and academia, and more recently, also the private sector in general, civil society and governments. We need a system of internet governance that allows each community to bring its particular strengths to the common table, but allows none of them to elevate its own interests above the public good.

Five years ago I founded an organization called the World Wide Web Foundation to ensure the web is the web we want, and that everyone can connect and use it freely.

The web has become an essential public utility.  Much of our traditional thinking about human rights of course applies directly to everything on the internet.  New things also become important:

1. Net neutrality means keeping the net free from discrimination, be it commercial or political.  The innovative explosion which has happened across the web over the last 25 years has happened only because the net has been neutral.  The social ground-breaking sense of possibility that we can understand each other and live in peace relies on an open net.

2. Freedom of expression is a crucial right, but it has to be coupled with a complementary right to privacy.  Mass surveillance presents perhaps the most immediate and perhaps the most insidious threat to human rights online.

It is great to be back in Brazil today.  Not just because Brazil is a wonderful country, and one which has always had a strong vibrant sense of opportunity with the Net.  But especially today as we are celebrating the Brazilian senate passing the Marco Civil da Internet - a very good example of how governments can play a positive role in advancing web rights and keeping the web open.

Of course Europeans are also celebrating the European Parliament passing legislation protecting the rights of users of the net, including a form of Net Neutrality.

These two data points mean we are making progress.

We have a huge way to go.  The principles of human rights on the net are new and not universally accepted.  The web becomes ever more exciting with advancing technology, but 60% of the population still can’t use the web at all.  As the web is giving people greater and greater power individually and collectively, so many forces are abusing or threaten to abuse the net and its citizens.  The web we will have in 25 years time is by no means clear, but is completely up to us to decide what we want to make that web, make that world.  That is why I am asking web users around the world – not just us in this conference room today - to define a global Magna Carta for the internet. That’s why I am asking countries everywhere to follow Brazil’s example and develop positive laws that protect and expand the rights of users to an open, free and universal web.

La luta continua. 

Thank you.”

The Web Standards community cannot arrogate credit for the success of the Web.  Nonetheless, this community has played a significant role.  An earlier post described competing pressures from stakeholders which make it hard to reach consensus about future needs.  It is even more difficult to reach such consensus with speed – a speed that matches the speed of innovation of the industry.  Yet, we have seen success in the rapid introduction of new technology.

At the 20th anniversary of the W3C let’s reflect on how the Web Standards Community has become more agile to address the growing requirements of a stable, open core for our Web of diversity and rich application.

Standards are developed by different standards organizations with different degrees of openness, multi-stakeholder input, speed, and consensus.  W3C’s approach to standardization is best summarized by the OpenStand principles to which we are signatories, punctuated by our strong focus on Royalty Free commitments.  The formal W3C Process ensures that W3C is faithful to OpenStand requirements of consensus and getting the best possible ideas for the future Web.

The W3C Process was defined several years ago, the world has changed, and we are adapting.  We change because we are more committed to the enhancement of the Web than we are entrapped by the details of the W3C Process.  We also look for good ideas that come from anywhere in the Web ecosystem – even if they do not follow our process.  Finding the right balance between process and flexibility has been a defining characteristic of W3C’s focus in the last several years and provides the agility we need for the future.

Community Groups

The formal W3C process works well when there is a consensus in the community that a particular technical topic is ripe for standardization.  However, the overhead of starting and operating a W3C Working Group —due to a charter review process that seeks Member support for new work— is sufficiently high that it does not pay to start a WG unless a topic is ripe.  Several years ago, we noticed that due to this high overhead, when stakeholders wanted to work together on pre-standardization topics; topics that might be ripe in 1-2 years they would simply go elsewhere.  But once work started elsewhere it was hard to bring it back to W3C.  The resulting fragmentation convinced us that we needed a more agile approach for pre-standardization work.

Two and a half years ago we introduced W3C Community Groups (CGs) for the community to collaborate on pre-standardization efforts.  The results exceeded our expectations.  In just a short time we now have more than 170 Community Groups (typically we have 50-60 Working Groups) and over 3500 engineers working in these groups (our Working Groups typically have about 1500 engineers).  In a very short time we have tripled the community of engineers working on the future of the Web at W3C.

The flexibility of Community Groups (low start-up overhead, no constraints on participation) is one plank of our search for greater agility.  True to our principles, we made sure that even low-overhead CGs have a (lightweight set of) Royalty-Free declarations.

Standards Track Revision

Community Groups help for early work, but there is a need for mainline standardization work to become more agile as well.  In the years since the W3C Process was established we have seen several changes that require a higher degree of agility.  These include:

• Open source development which ensures that technologies develop faster and more openly than in the past.
• Browsers ship new functions with much greater speed – users get a new browser download every several months.
• (Partly as a consequence of open source development) there are more browsers in the marketplace and so more early experimentation is taking place.
• In industry, there is no longer a waterfall process of standardization followed by implementation – standardization and implementation happen simultaneously.  So standardization processes must adapt.

The heart of the W3C technical standards development process is found in Chapter 7 of the W3C Process Document.  It needs to be adjusted to allow more agility, more parallelization of work, and less bureaucracy.  W3C is in the middle of a major revamp to simplify the process and make it a more modern for the next 20 years.

Modularity: CSS, WebApps, HTML

Greater agility is not achieved solely through process innovation, it is also achieved through design.  We are seeing an increase in the application of this principle across groups.  As the breadth of technologies and use cases increase, it is not possible to address these in a single monolithic specification.  Major pieces of web architecture are now modular, such as CSS 3 Modules, independent efforts for Web APIs, and HTML Extension Specifications.

The WHATWG

Within the Web Standards community, there are those who feel that we need to be even more agile.  The WHATWG is a community of web engineers who advocate a Living Standard model.  Instead of taking (typically) a couple of years to create a next generation standard, they advocate a model whereby new enhancements are continually included into a specification and the “current version” of a standard is available on a daily basis.

W3C, while respecting the desire for agility, has a different approach.  We agree that Web technology is “Living”, that rapid iteration of releases of standards is desirable and that Editor’s Drafts of the current thinking of the community should be constantly kept up to date.  However, we reserve the name “Standard” for specifications that have gone through our consensus process, have wide community input, are stable, have demonstrated interoperability, and have patent commitments behind them.

Despite different methodologies, we work together.  The reason is simple.  When you ask engineers in either community what their primary objective is – it is not related to any particular process or methodology – “it’s all about improving the Web”.  So at W3C we’ve taken steps to partner with the WHATWG.  These include the aforementioned CGs, liberalization of our Document License, and backing up email lists of the WHATWG.  Because the overarching W3C goal is our mission to Lead the Web to its Full Potential.

Liaisons with Other Standards Bodies

The impact of the Web on society is immense and it is impossible for W3C to standardize everything. We may define our mission to be “Leading the Web to its Full Potential,” but it is not realistic that we do it entirely ourselves. Partly this is due to history - some important organizations (e.g. IEEE Standards Association) predated us and were already working on key technologies; partly it is due to the fact that if Web standards affect an industry, it often makes more sense for an industry body to formulate its Web standards. To ensure a good working relationship with other Standards bodies, W3C maintains scores of liaisons with other bodies.

Some of these are of particular note. The Web sits on top of the Internet and so our closest Liaison is with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The IETF not only provides the Internet layer standards, but also provides key standards that are of direct relevance to the Web, such as HTTP.

At a different level, the International Standards Organization (ISO) develops de jure standards with the involvement of governments. While W3C’s methodology is different (and tuned for the needs of the Web), we recognize that there is a demand for certain standards to be ratified by more formal organizations. Accordingly, we have achieved PAS status (Publicly accessible Specifications), which enables W3C Recommendations to also be endorsed as ISO/JTC1 standards.

Dealing with Controversies

Given the impact of the Web, it is axiomatic that different stakeholders will have different views on key decisions.  And no individual or organization has a monopoly on truth to correctly make all decisions.  So how do we deal with controversy in a way that supports agility and prepares for the future?

Most controversies are technical in nature and are well contained within Working Groups.  Working Groups operate by consensus and on almost every technical area of disagreement they are able to reach consensus and compromise.

Some topics (often those that relate to the scope of W3C) are more complex, including:

• Our decision that “content protection” is in scope for the HTML Working Group.  This has been extensively debated in the Restricted Media Community Group.
• Our decision that “Compliance” is in the scope of the Tracking Protection Working Group.  This has been a subject of public debate.

We also have controversy related to our internal processes.  These controversies include:

• The Living Standards Model
• The copyright license under which W3C Recommendations are prepared.
• Major technical decisions such as the decision to standardize XHTML.

We believe that we have a robust approach to dealing with such controversies which will continue to serve us in the future.  Some of the key aspects of our approach include:

• Open dialog and discussion; enhanced with Community Groups
• Consensus decision making
• Formal Objections which allow stakeholders to appeal to Director, Tim Berners-Lee
• A resolution approach (by Tim) to resolve objections via consensus rather than fiat, whenever possible.

New Services

W3C is evolving its model to serve the Community in other ways than specifications.  Webplatform.org makes it easier for developers to learn about how to use W3C specifications.  W3C Validators make it easier for web site developers to validate that they are creating their pages correctly.  W3DevCampus provides on-line training in W3C specs to developers.

Global Focus

The Web has long been Global, but the globalization of the Web development community has been intense over the last several years.  Much of this is due to rapid penetration of the Internet in Asian countries (e.g. China), as well as the increased importance of Mobile, which has a large global footprint of vendors, service providers, and applications.  Moreover, the availability of open source browser tool kits has made it easier for manufacturers around the globe to create their own browsers – driving more innovation and involvement with standards setting.

W3C has intensified its global engagement.  We have Offices in about twenty countries.  Our Working Groups take up needs of a global marketplace – such as Internationalization, and vertical text support.  Our Global Membership has grown.  Significantly, in 2013, we added a Host location for the first time in 15 years – in China.

There is more to be done.  Participation in W3C activities is still challenged by issues of culture, language, and time-zone.  We anticipate that our global Hosts will facilitate rapid improvement in these areas.

Summary

As we celebrate the twin anniversaries of the Web at 25, and W3C at 20, we look back at tremendous accomplishment.  In a Boston Globe article coinciding with the 150th Anniversary of MIT, the W3C was rated as the most important contribution that MIT has made to society.  And the Web is the most impactful innovation of our time.  But we are focused on the future.  We see opportunity for further impact of the Web and are re-engineering key aspects of W3C so that we may continue our mission to Lead the Web to its Full Potential.

Deadline: 7 April, 2014. Thereafter, public feedback open until 20 April, 2014.

For more information: https://webwewant.org/2014-grants/

Web and Society

Generational

The Web is a technological invention.  Then non-technologists found it useful.  They didn’t grow up on the Web, they didn’t learn about it in school – it was a black-box tool set to communicate with others.

Millenials have grown up on the Web.  Even those in non-technical careers utilize web technology and understand it.  Today, millions (or billions) of people think about how to expand the impact of the Web.  With more people will come more innovation and more impact.

Privacy and personal control

Recent revelations about surveillance on the Web have heightened a growing concern about the sharing and discovery of personal information and the question of how people protect their privacy.  Many technologies exist today to ensure security of data flow and personal control of private information.  But in our “innocence of youth” we are not focused on the usage of these technologies.  In some cases the technologies are too inconvenient, sometimes we don’t use them out of ignorance, and sometimes we may not fully grasp the dangers.

As we mature, and we see real damage – we will lose our innocence.  This will result in a new generation of technologies for the Web.  We will standardize protections.  We will make them easy-to-use.  Invention will be required to balance the benefits of a “knowledgeable Web” that caters to users by knowing them and an “all knowing Web” which makes us uncomfortable with what is known about us.

Web for All

Less than half the planet has access to the Web.  We need to fix that.

Everyone who joins the Web adds to the Web.  The Web is the reflection of the goals, aspirations, and obstacles of everyone on the planet.  Everyone is different and brings in a different perspective.  Entire demographics, countries, languages, and cultures that are missing from the Web is a detraction for all of us.  Let’s get everyone on the Web and let’s all benefit.

Core infrastructure

Closing the gap with native platforms

There is a constant tension between innovation and standardization.  While much innovation happens simultaneously with standardization, individual platform providers are often the first to introduce new features.  This has been particularly true in recent years when new families of devices achieved access to the Web.  Each time that a new device was added to the mix, it had unique proprietary features that needed to be introduced into the standard infrastructure.

This is seen in the area of mobile applications.  Mobile Apps are popular, and vendors have rushed to get new features added to their platforms and ensure a seamless experience of these Apps running on their platforms.  This has extended to both the technology of the mobile device, as well as the ecosystem for procuring, downloading, installing, and managing those Apps.  This is an area where there are gaps between the Open Web Platform and native platforms: in areas such as performance, richness of API set, payments, and buying experience.

This provides a roadmap for additional features that are required for the Open Web Platform.  Today, the OWP is behind in certain areas - to be expected given the rapid pace of innovation in mobile apps over the past several years.  We are focused on closing the gap, and will get their, driven by industry’s imperative for interoperability. The world of devices will only grow richer and more diverse, increasing further our need for interoperable solutions.

Applications become infrastructure

It is the nature of computer platforms that they form a common basis for applications that leverage the platforms; but over time – these applications sink into the platform.  Commonly we have seen this in operating systems which began by providing low-level primitives to manage resources, but evolved into database systems, telecommunications systems, browsers, word processors, etc.

For the Web, video was once thought of as an application, today it is a core part of Web infrastructure.

There is a growing set of popular applications on the Web: search, entertainment, social networking, cloud computing, e-commerce, Web payments, and publishing are a few.  Each of these are candidates to become part of standard Web infrastructure over time.  With such an expansion of the OWP, new, more powerful, higher-level applications will arise.

Web of Things

Everyone is talking about the Internet of Things.

We need to enhance the Web architecture to accommodate the Internet of Things.  At one level, all of these “Things” will represent different classes of objects with different properties.  We will need to standardize a vocabulary to reason about these “Things”; search for them; and have linked information about them. In that way, they will be more useful in Smart Cities and Smart Factories.

Not all of these Things will browse the Web but we are certain to want to access their capabilities through our browsers.  We will find Web browsers or servers in new classes of objects - from specialized personal medical equipment to home energy management systems.  Every time we have expanded the set of devices browsing the Web it has introduced new requirements for Web architecture, and this promises to be no exception.

Providing a URI for a larger set of items in the Web of Things, and building browsers for specialized devices is only the first impact of the Web of Things on Web Architecture.  Once Things are a part of the Web, new Web based applications will arise.  In Smart Cities, we will expand the OWP so that citizens and service providers can have rich applications on the Web informing them about the status of the cities.  For Smart Factories, we will expand the OWP so that factories can enhance their flexibility in managing all of the Things that flow through the factory.

Thus Web of Things both provides new core infrastructure, as well as driving new application areas.  Here are additional significant changes to the OWP that we expect will come from new application areas.

Application areas

Web enhancements are driven by the needs of particular application areas.  Typically, an application area might require a unique platform underpinning, which over time becomes relevant to other application areas.

We have only just begun: Social, MOOCs, Automotive, Finance

Some Web application areas are young.  Applications such as social networking and MOOCs are only around for a few years.  We don’t know how they will evolve but history suggests that as they mature there will be further innovation and development of platform capabilities.

The area of social is particularly interesting.  Looking at some recent M&A (e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp) we see that users are becoming less interested in a single monolithic social application, but would like to have different social networking applications for different purposes. As these proliferate, we will see requirements for platform componentry for these applications to interoperate - and become part of the standard.

Areas such as cloud computing have been around for a while, but need greater focus in terms of standardization.  Rich cloud capabilities are available from many vendors, open source stacks provide technology for cloud computing, yet true standardization has proved elusive.  More successful standardization efforts will drive further progress for cloud computing.

Other areas are just now emerging.  Conversations about Web based standards for automotive systems and Payment systems are just beginning, but there is a long way to go.  But there is huge potential to move much of the information processing needs for both Automotive and Financial Services onto a standard interoperable platform.  Each will have its own flavor.  For Automotive, for example, ensuring that there are no distracted drivers will be key.  For financial, interfaces will be required to integrate with existing financial systems.

A Web of Style

An extreme study in future impact is seen in the Publishing industry.  Above, we characterized the Web as a new Publishing mechanism – one that offered everyone the possibility of being an author, and unprecedented mass distribution.  There is a rich history of printed works and many well-established approaches to layout and typography were not available to the early Web.  Fast forward to 2014.  Today much of what previously could be done uniquely with specialized publishing tools can be done on the Web platform.  Where the Web is still deficient, we often know how to make the necessary progress.

We refer to this as a Web of Style.  Different types of publishing: notably catalogues and magazines have required a high degree of styling.  This was easier in a physical medium than on the Web - since on the Web we need to have the levers to make it possible to have the “styled” page look authentic on a range of browsing devices.  Today’s technology is close to achieving device independent styling, and it will continue as an important driver for CSS in the years to come.

Imagine what happens to the publishing industry when everything that was previously done using unique technologies is done on the Web.  Add to that the advantages of the Web: linkiness, new business models, massive distribution, everyone an author, and the ability to run interoperably on a wide range of devices – and we see impact on an industry like never before.

Entertainment and personal publishing

Right behind the publishing industry is the Entertainment industry.  There are age groups in certain countries who are more likely to watch TV or movies on their PC through the Web than on television sets.  Since that is a young demographic, this trend will increase.  When the Web becomes the universal platform for the creation, distribution, and consumption of content – the entertainment industry will look totally different than it looks today.

To summarize, there are huge drivers that will continue to enrich the OWP.

A measure of the greater opportunity for the Web is this richness of the community driving Web standards.  In my four years at W3C I have been privileged to observe rapid growth of this community.  The way that the community has adapted - become more agile - to meet this challenge is the focus of my next post.

Next week: Creating an agile Web standards ecosystem.

The creation and ethos of W3C

It didn’t take long for the Web to catch on, first within university environments, and then ultimately to the general public.  Individuals and companies alike created websites.  So there was an imperative to enhance the technology of the World Wide Web.  Adapt new capabilities.  What’s the best way to create the content?  To browse the Web?  To ensure that the Web could be viewed on different devices?

One approach to enhance Web technologies could have been to allow “a thousand flowers to bloom” and leave it at that.  There is tremendous value in market-driven innovation, and the Web makes it possible for many stakeholders to innovate.  But without the extra step of bringing people together to achieve global interoperability, the vision of One Web might never have taken off, or success might have come much more slowly.

What would have happened?  Different companies with different ideas would have enhanced the Web in different ways.  That could have worked for a while.  But ultimately, the Web would have become a veritable Tower of Babel – a frustrating experience for users epitomized by the phrase “best viewed in browser X”.  Inventors working on the next generation could have taken out patents which in some cases could have shut out others.  Market leaders would have selected technical solutions that optimized for their companies rather than the Web as a whole.  Any of these results would have thwarted the vision of the Web.  A Web that lacked interoperability, universality, the best possible technologies, or a Web that excluded participants via patent encumbrances would have destroyed the Web as a global instrument to share information.

Faced with these concerns, in October 1994, the World Wide Web Consortium was formed to ensure that Web enhancements follow the guiding principles of the Web.  It was organized to reflect the stakeholders of the Web.  Tim Berners-Lee has been the Director of the W3C from its inception.  On the one hand Tim guides the architecture of the Web by having formal approval authority for new standards.  On the other hand, true to the principle of – “this is for everyone” – Tim exercises this authority lightly -  by delegating enhancements to W3C Working Groups – and only getting personally involved when an impasse is reached.

The W3C has established “Leading the Web to its Full Potential” as its mission.  W3C is a small organization in a huge ecosystem and does not pretend that it alone is the driver of progress on the Web.  But we maintain this mission statement because of a belief that the values that surround the building of the core of the Web are critical to assuring continuous, rapid growth.

The structure of the W3C reflects the guiding principles of the Web in more ways than one.  As opposed to many standards organizations, the W3C has a sizable staff of technology experts that work with both Tim and Working Groups to facilitate Web enhancements and support the architectural cohesion of the Web.  This staff is Hosted by four research institutions (MIT in Cambridge, ERCIM in Sophia-Antipolis, Keio University in Tokyo, and Beihang University in Beijing) to work in an innovative forward-thinking environment.

Organizations large and small: innovative companies, research institutions, non-profits, universities, and start-ups are Members of the consortium so that ideas that are relevant to industry, research, and government are discussed and then deployed.  The general public is also a stakeholder and interacts with the W3C.  First, specifications are made available to the public at several formal steps of the W3C process to ensure that the public can comment on the work.  Individuals who have ideas for the Working Groups whose organizations are not Members of W3C participate as Invited Experts.  All W3C specifications are available to the public no cost.  Our community translates specifications from English into widely spoken languages, which facilitates global adoption.

While W3C is a technical standards organization, it aligns with the original values and principles of the Open Web.  Its highest priority is interoperability – to maintain the original vision of a Global Web where any device can access any Web site.  In 2003, W3C formalized the W3C Patent Policy to enshrine the imperative to avoid patent encumbrances.  W3C does not object to businesses using the Web and patenting aspects that are key to their businesses.  But if a technology is to qualify to be “part of the core of the Web” – it must support interoperability without encumbrances. Companies that built their businesses on today’s Royalty-Free Web have an obligation to invest in the next generation of an RF Web.

Interoperability from a technology perspective does not work if it does not extend to humans.  In October 1997, W3C established the Web Accessibility Initiative to ensure that the disability community could get full access to the Web.  In a world where access to vital aspects of life depends on the Web – we cannot disenfranchise those with disabilities.  We have an Internationalization Activity so that the Web is truly “for all” – independent of language, or character set.

As the Web matures, certain areas take on greater focus.  In recent years, ensuring that specifications have what’s needed to provide privacy and security is essential.  With a proliferation of different types of devices that access the Web, the guiding principle of device independence is especially relevant.

This model has been successful. In 20 years, W3C has created 321 Recommendations, and currently has 46 Working Groups (and 14 Interest Groups) with 1938 Drafts in preparation. Not all Drafts will become Recommendations, but it shows the scope of activity.

So when we celebrate the Web @ 25 and the W3C @ 20 – let’s recall the foundational values and celebrate them as well.

Technology progress

The 25 years of the Web has been a period of rapid technology advance in information processing.  The Web has been a participant and driver of some of these technologies, but many of these technology advances have been independent of the Web.  So what is the role of the Web with respect to core technology?

At one level, the Web stands out in its commitment to a single technological imperative – Interoperability.  That is to say, the challenge of the Web technical community is to grab every new technology and make sure that it works interoperably on a growing diversity of devices together with this global database.

Often new technologies are first absorbed as proprietary extensions to the Web – they are not common enough to find their way into the core platform.  Leading edge users combine the existing Web and the new technology into a unique “application” of the core Web.  A recent example of that is video, whose use on the Web began as proprietary plug-ins.  When it becomes clear that such a new technology needs to be in the basic infrastructure, the technology is added to the core Web (e.g. video in HTML5).

We track an extensive set of technologies – because over time many need to be brought into the Web architecture.  Some of the important ones include: graphics, video, voice, real-time communications, linked data, security, cryptography, identity management, fonts, geo-location, social networking, mobile technologies, encoding, devices (e.g. game platform, e-books, automotive platforms, set-top boxes), and cloud computing.

The Open Web Platform

W3C has had the mission to Lead the Web to its Full Potential, from its inception, but in the last few years we have been talking about the Open Web Platform.  What is the import of that phrase?

It has always been critical for there to be an Open Web.  In the earliest days, the Web was a series of linked pages and it was important that these pages could be accessed from any device - typically different desktop and laptop devices with different operating systems.

Today’s Web is a far richer place from multiple points of view.  Its use goes beyond the static reading of documents from personal computers.

Today’s Web is a fully distributed platform for building applications.  Thus we call it a Platform in that these applications run across a wide dynamic range of devices with different operating systems and different purposes.  These devices include laptop and desktop PCs, tablets, e-book readers, set-top boxes, and automotive infotainment systems.  In essence, the Web community has built the most interoperable platform in history.  Some view this platform as a distributed operating system across disparate devices - in fact several vendors have built systems which are operating systems based on Web technology (e.g., Firefox OS and Tizen).

So on the “open web” App writers develop distributed applications that can run on any platform.  These technologies are also customized by particular industries to create industry-specific platforms. These include ePub (for publishing), efforts to build a platform for entertainment (driven by W3C’s Web and TV Interest Group), efforts to focus on the needs of mobile devices (in W3C’s Web and Mobile Interest Group), and efforts to build a platform for automotive vehicles (driven by W3C’s Automotive Platform Business Group).

The OWP has rich capability.  To make sure that there is a strong basis for building applications, applications programming interfaces (APIs) are made available in W3C’s WebApps Working Group, SysApps Working Group, and DAP Working Group (among others).  It is a multimedia platform that supports video, graphics, a fonts framework, rich styling (driven by W3C’s CSS Working Group).  There are efforts that focus on security and privacy.  Web structured data provides deep and descriptive linking (driven by W3C’s RDF Working Group).

Next week: Future Direction of the Open Web Platform.

To read more and to see a selection of photos and video from the event, check out Yahoo’s official Tumblr post.

Happy birthday to the Web!

• The role of W3C and current activity in standardizing the Open Web Platform (OWP)
• The future direction of the OWP
• Creating an agile Web standards ecosystem

The Web: core vision

On March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted “Information Management: A Proposal” to his management at CERN to create the World Wide Web.  It was audacious in its scope.  Imagine – connecting all of the world’s information into a globally linked set of pages.  But, humble in business expectations.  This was not someone’s proprietary idea to start a business.  As Tim tweeted at the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics – “This is for everyone”.

Thus the Web was based on several core ideas.  “Linked” pages meant that the Web would serve to link documents, and ultimately devices and people.  The global nature would allow network effects - value grows non-linearly with more participants.

Tim proposed that the Web should not be a patented invention for royalties.  True to the vision of a universal database owned by the planet, the Web was to be Royalty-Free.  That principle continues to guide the core infrastructure of the Web.

Empowerment. Enablement. Democratization.  Everyone is a publisher on the Web.  Classical publishing had few authors creating worthy content, and publishing firms made content available via books, newspapers, and magazines.  The new model – revolutionary – democratized publishing: everyone is worthy to share information.  So, everyone is an author and there is immediate massive distribution of information.  This did not immediately supplant traditional publishing (with its high quality typography and curated content), but it created and filled a new need.

Impact on society

Simply put, the Web has transformed everything.

Volumes can be written about the impact of the Web.  Here I only aspire to summarize the “top of the waves”.

The original vision was to have a global Web of information.  Directly from this vision have come far-reaching consequences for life.

The Web has transformed human interaction. It democratized publishing as indicated above. Everyone is a publisher: via their personal Web page, YouTube videos, blogging their opinions; posting to other blogs.  Social networking. Today’s Webizens have unprecedented tools to share with their cohorts: Facebook, Twitter, QQ, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Weibo come to mind.

The Web has transformed how companies relate to their customers.  First, the corporate website was a means to share information and market to customers. Now commerce is e-commerce.  Companies sell on the Web or utilize the Web as an assist for in-store sales. Advertising has moved from blunt mass-media commercials to targeted ads on the Web.

The Web has transformed education. Simple changes include the mass availability of information. More substantive changes include distance learning.  More radical changes are currently being explored with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

The Web has transformed entertainment. The Web has become the standard distribution mechanism for games, music, and video. By enabling everyone to be a publisher, the Web has democratized the development and distribution of creative content for the planet.

The Web has transformed government.  Almost all governments use the Web to get information to citizens: providing information about the government as well as interacting with the citizenry (e.g. income tax forms).  This informed citizenry is more thoughtful in participating in democracy.  Election campaigns have used the Web to get their message out.  Most provocatively, informed citizens in non-democratic countries have used the Web to learn the benefits of democracy and to pursue them by organizing with fellow citizens through the Web.

With the power of the Web to inform consumers, advertise, sell to consumers, and distribute to consumers, almost no business operates today as it did 25 years ago.  Forward-thinking companies who anticipated the trend became the new successful companies.  Companies that were stuck in their old way lost traction with their customers and fell behind.  Certain industries, such as: retail, telecommunications, entertainment, and publishing do not even resemble the structures they had less than a quarter century ago.

Continuing impact

The Web is not perfect.  And if we waited for it to be perfect there would be no progress as perfect is the enemy of good enough.  But that is no excuse – we need to make it better.

We have unrealized ambitions.  The Web is not yet a universal platform.  The majority of the planet has never accessed the Web.  In most cases this is due to economic deprivation; sometimes for political reasons.  We encourage organizations that strive for an affordable Internet.  Our sister organization – the Web Foundation, has made the Web We Want the focus of their anniversary celebrations.

The Web has been an important driver for economic, political, and social progress.  The Web Foundation has created a Web Index to rate progress that is being made across the globe.  It is an important instrument to gauge progress and thereby to be a driver of further progress.  People can participate in this focus via The Web We Want. Clearly further progress is required.

The World Wide Web has had a huge impact on social connections, companies, governments, education, entertainment, and has transformed industries.  I am not a futurist who will characterize what the world will look like in the next 20-25 years.  But I can comment why there will be continued changes in the Web platform.  I will also explain how this will continue to have impacts - both in the social realm as well as the business realm.  More on that in subsequent posts.

Next week: The role of the World Wide Web Consortium in standardizing the Open Web Platform.

In the following quarter-century, the Web has changed the world in ways that I never could have imagined. There have been many exciting advances.  It has generated billions of dollars in economic growth, turned data into the gold of the 21st century, unleashed innovation in education and healthcare, whittled away geographic and social boundaries, revolutionised the media, and forced a reinvention of politics in many countries by enabling constant two-way dialogue between the rulers and the ruled.

There are a few principles which allowed the web, as a platform, to support such growth.  By design, the Web is universal, royalty-free, open and decentralised. Thousands of people worked together to build the early Web in an amazing, non-national spirit of collaboration; tens of thousands more invented the applications and services that make it so useful to us today, and there is still room for each one of us to create new things on and through the Web.  This is for everyone. 

Today, and throughout this year, we should celebrate the Web’s first 25 years. But though the mood is upbeat, we also know we are not done. We have much to do for the Web to reach its full potential. We must continue to defend its core principles and tackle some key challenges. To name just three:

• How do we connect the nearly two-thirds of the planet who can’t yet access the Web?
• Who has the right to collect and use our personal data, for what purpose and under what rules?
• How do we create a high-performance open architecture that will run on any device, rather than fall back into proprietary alternatives?

There are no easy answers to these, and many other questions. Remember though that the Web was built by all of us, and so we all can, and should, play a role in defining its future. So please get involved. Send a birthday message to the Web using #web25 on any social media platform or by using this site. Support the work of the World Wide Web Foundation and the Web We Want campaign. Engage with the World Wide Web Consortium to imagine and build the future standards that will keep the Web the powerful platform for innovation that it is, starting with a symposium on the future of the Web.

Please visit this site (webat25.org) regularly for more details on events to celebrate the Web’s birthday and for more on how you can be involved in shaping its future. By working together, I believe we can build a Web that truly is for everyone: one that is accessible to all, from any device, and one that empowers all of us to achieve our dignity, rights and potential as humans. Let’s use this landmark birthday as a crucial step on that path.

Translations of this post

• Arabic: مرحباً بكم في الذكرى الخامسة والعشرين لانطلاقة الويب - رسالة من تيم بيرنرز لي
• Spanish: Bienvenidos al 25 Aniversario de la Web - Un Mensaje de Tim Berners-Lee
• French: Célébrons le 25ième Anniversaire du Web - Un Message de Tim Berners-Lee
• Portuguese: Bem-vindos ao 25^o. aniversário da Web - Uma mensagem de Tim Berners-Lee

Web users across the globe share #web25 birthday messages to mark the day Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web

12 March, 2014. Today, around the world, people are joining Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee in wishing the World Wide Web a happy 25th birthday. To mark the occasion, everyone is encouraged to share birthday greetings on social media using #web25. Select greetings will also be posted on a virtual birthday card on the official anniversary site webat25.org.

Berners-Lee and two organisations close to him - the World Wide Web Foundation and the World Wide Web Consortium, will also be asking people to take action to protect and enhance the open Web in 2014.

Recalling the theme of his famous tweet during the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, “This is for Everyone”, Berners-Lee said:

“The Web’s billions of users are what have made it great. I hope that many of them will join me today in celebrating this important milestone.  I also hope this anniversary will spark a global conversation about our need to defend principles that have made the Web successful,  and to unlock the Web’s untapped potential. I believe we can build a Web that truly is for everyone: one that is accessible to all, from any device, and one that empowers all of us to achieve our dignity, rights and potential as humans. Tell us about your dream for the Web with #web25.”

First proposed in March 1989, the Web has transformed the way the world communicates, creates and collaborates. Over two in five of the world’s population are now connected, often bridging geographical and social divides. Each minute, they send each other hundreds of millions of messages, share 20 million photos, and exchange at least $15m worth of goods and services. The success of the Web can be traced to its original design as a decentralised system and an open architecture anyone could help to build.

However, the open Web’s true potential as a tool for empowering everyone has yet to be realised, and could dwindle if key challenges are not solved. Throughout 2014 and beyond, Berners-Lee is seeking to engage Web users, business and policy-makers in debating critical issues such as:

• How do we connect the almost three in five people around the world who are not yet connected to the Web?
• Regulation of the Internet is hotly contested terrain globally and nationally. What fresh, inclusive solutions can avoid the damage of a fragmented Web?
• Our ability to use the Web to have a say and organise collectively is under threat from censorship and surveillance, whilst anyone online is threatened by cybercrime. How can we meet society’s growing needs for online freedom and privacy as well as security?
• Globally, fewer than 10% of key government datasets have been opened up for free re-use online, drastically limiting Web-powered innovation in areas such as improving public transport and fighting corruption. What steps can be taken to unlock the true power of open data?
• The Open Web Platform must be capable of expanding to meet industry demand for interoperability, mobility, and performance across connected devices of all shapes and sizes. How do we tackle the challenges raised by such diversity?
• How do we promote a rich ecosystem of diversity and innovation for the long-term, rather than less fertile walled gardens?

“If we want a Web that is truly for everyone, then everyone must play a role in shaping its next 25 years,” Berners-Lee concluded.

To get started, we invite you to:

• Send your birthday greetings via social media using hashtag #web25 and visit webat25.org
• Join Tim Berners-Lee’s for a Reddit Ask Me Anything on 12 March 2014 at 19.00 GMT
• Sign up to join the Web We Want Campaign, co-organized by the Web Foundation, to find out how to participate in events and actions in your country or community to defend users’ rights on and to the Web.
• Attend or watch the live stream of W3C’s 20th Anniversary Symposium, when we will imagine the future of the Web through discussion and gala dinner, to take place 29 October in Santa Clara, California.

Many organizations will engage in birthday activities all year long. To learn more, visit webat25.org. For press requests, email press@webat25.org.

Web 25 Sponsors

W3C and the World Wide Web Foundation would like to thank all of the sponsors who are helping to make these activities possible:

• Ford Foundation
• ICANN
• Intel
• Twitter
• Yahoo!

Read more about sponsors ›

Translations of this Release

• Arabic: العالم يحتفل بمرور 25 عاما من الشبكة العنكبوتية
• Chinese: 全球共庆万维网诞生25周年
• French: Le monde entier fête les 25 ans du Web
• Dutch: De Wereld Viert 25 Jaar Web
• German: Die Welt feiert den 25. Geburtstag des World Wide Web
• Hungarian: IA világ a Web 25 éves születésbnapját ünnepli
• Italian: Il Mondo celebra i 25 anni del Web
• Japanese 世界で祝すWeb25周年
• Korean: 웹 탄생 25주년을 기념하며…
• Portuguese: O mundo comemora os 25 anos da Web
• Spanish: El mundo celebra los 25 años de la Web
• Swedish: Hela världen firar webbens 25-årsjubileum

A Brief History of the Early Web

• March 1989: “Information Management: A Proposal” written by Tim Berners-Lee (TBL) and circulated for comments at CERN. October 1990: TBL starts work on a hypertext GUI browser+editor using the NeXTStep development environment. He makes up “WorldWideWeb” as a name for the program and project.
• August 1991: Web software made available on the Internet via FTP.
• May 1992: Pei Wei’s “Viola” GUI browser for X test version
• February 1993: National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) release first alpha version of Marc Andreessen’s “Mosaic for X”
• April 1993: CERN’s declares that WWW technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being payable to CERN.
• May 1994: First International WWW Conference, CERN, Geneva.
• October 1994: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) founded

Read more Web history ›

About Tim Berners-Lee

A graduate of Oxford University, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread. He is Director of W3C and a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation.  In addition, He is the 3Com Founders Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence ( CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he also heads the Decentralized Information Group (DIG). He is also a Professor in the Electronics and Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK.

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About the World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. The Open Web Platform is a current major focus. Over 375 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan, and Beihang University in China, and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

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About the World Wide Web Foundation

Established by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web Foundation (webfoundation.org) seeks to establish the open Web as a global public good and a basic right, creating a world where everyone, everywhere can use the Web to communicate, collaborate and innovate freely.

The Web Foundation’s team of 20 works with more than 90 partner organisations across 60 countries. Our current initiatives include co-leading the burgeoning Web We Want movement (webwewant.org), creating the world’s first ever Open Data Contracting Standard, and spearheading the Alliance for Affordable Internet (a4ai.org), the broadest technology sector coalition.

The World Wide Web Foundation also produces the Web Index (thewebindex.org), the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web’s growth, utility and impact on people and nations. Launched in 2012 to critical acclaim, the 2013 version included data on 20 more countries, as well as enhanced indicators on key topics such as affordability, censorship and surveillance, gender and open data.

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Sources

• ITU: http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/publications/mis2013.aspx
• Open Data Barometer: http://www.opendataresearch.org/project/2013/odb
• http://www.opendataresearch.org/content/2013/539/press-release-open-data-barometer
• Intel: http://scoop.intel.com/what-happens-in-an-internet-minute/
• Mckinsey: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/internet_matters

To celebrate 25 years of the Web we have gathered 24 facts about Tim Berners-Lee, the Web, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the World Wide Web Foundation.

In the spirit of the Web, we want your input on what the 25th fact should be. Tell us on social media with hash tag #web25fact.

1. Berners-Lee is the son of British mathematicians and computer scientists Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners-Lee, who worked on the first commercially-built electronic computer, the Ferranti Mark 1.
2. In college, Berners-Lee built a computer out of an old television set.
3. The Web was not Berners-Lee’s first design for a system to link information.  In 1980 he wrote ENQUIRE, whose name came from a Victorian era how-to book called “Enquire Within Upon Everything” owned by Berners-Lee’s parents while he was growing up.  The ENQUIRE code has been lost to history.
4. Before settling on “the Web,” Berners-Lee thought of the names “Information Mesh”, “The Information Mine”, and “Mine of Information”.
5. The Web was first described in a March 1989 proposal from Berners-Lee while at CERN. In it he wrote, “In providing a system for manipulating this sort of information, the hope would be to allow a pool of information to develop which could grow and evolve with the organisation and the projects it describes. For this to be possible, the method of storage must not place its own restraints on the information. This is why a “web” of notes with links (like references) between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system.” For even more about the people who inspired and built the Web, see Berners-Lee’s 2004 presentation How it all Started.
6. Mike Sendall, Berners-Lee’s manager at the time, commented on the original proposal “Vague, but exciting.” Fortunately, Sendall thought enough of the proposal to allow Berners-Lee to work on it on the side.
7. In 1990, Berners-Lee wrote the first browser and editor, called “WorldWideWeb.app,”  which ran on a NeXT computer. Steve Jobs had left Apple to create NeXT Inc., and later returned to Apple.
8. WorldWideWeb.app, which took 2 months to write, was also an editor, so the earliest vision of the Web was one where anyone could contribute.
9. The first Web site was info.cern.ch, hosted by CERN, on Tim’s desktop computer.
10. The early Web pages from 1992 were preserved by Berners-Lee and W3C, but CERN did not serve them at theoriginal address until in April 2013.
11. A few simple ideas have played a key role in making the Web a success:
    • it is universal: it can be made to work with any form of data, on any device, with any software, in any language. You can link to any piece of information
    • it is decentralized: anybody can create a site. This enabled the Web to grow quickly.
    • the core technology is royalty-free: because people can implement Web technology royalty-free, this spurs innovation.
    • it is the result of global collaboration.
12. The Web is not the same thing as the Internet. The Internet protocols describe how to send packets of information between pieces of software. The first Internet protocols were defined in 1969. Since then, many applications have used them in different ways, including Email, FTP, and the Web. The Web is any information that is identified with a URL (Universal Resource Locator). That makes the URL the most fundamental piece of Web technology.
13. The double slash “//” in URLs was an idea Berners-Lee copied from the Apollo workstation’s ‘domain’ file system. Microsoft later adopted double backslash ‘\\’ under the same influence.
14. Although many Web site addresses start with “www” there is no requirement they begin this way; it was just an early convention to help people recognize that someone was running a Web server.
15. The WorldWideWeb browser was made available on on the public Internet by FTP, and promoted on network news messages in August 1991. Other browsers soon followed, including ViolaWWW, Midas, Erwise, and Samba. Mosaic, which later became Netscape, was released in 1993. You can experience the early ‘line mode’ browser that was released in 1992 with a line mode browser emulator made available in 2013.
16. On 30 April 1993, CERN put WorldWideWeb in the public domain, a critical milestone in enabling broad adoption of the Web.
17. In October 1994, Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to develop common standards for core Web technology. The goal of the organization is to ensure the Web is available to all, and not fragmented into proprietary silos. Today four neutral academic organizations host the activities of the Consortium: MIT, ERCIM, Keio University, and Beihang University.
18. In 2004, W3C adopted an industry-leading Royalty-Free patent policy to further Berners-Lee’s vision of the Web as an open platform for innovation.
19. Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004. While some call him “Sir Tim”, he most often goes by “timbl”.
20. In 2008, Berners-Lee launched the World Web Foundation.  Its mission? To establish the open Web as a global public good and a basic right, ensuring that everyone can access and use it freely.
21. Today it is estimated that just under 40% of the world’s population has Internet access. On average, a fixed broadband connection costs over a third of income in the developing world. (Source: ITU)
22. The languages most used in online communications are, in order: English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese.
23. Estimates of the number of Web pages vary greatly, but it is surely in the tens of billions. Many estimates depend on what search engines access, but it is expected that many times more public pages exist that are not indexed by search engines.
24. Internet live stats estimates that the number of Web sites will reach 1 billion by the end of 2014, this anniversary year.

Read the Full blog post on webfoundation.org.