Quotes By Tim Berners Lee

Compared even to the development of the phone or TV, the Web developed very quickly.

One of the things I like about the computer that I use is that I can write a program on it or I can download a program on to it and run it. That's kind of important to me, and that's also kind of important to the whole future of the internet... obviously a closed platform is a serious brake on innovation.

I hope we will use the Net to cross barriers and connect cultures.

We need diversity of thought in the world to face the new challenges.

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.

The Mobile Web Initiative is important - information must be made seamlessly available on any device.

The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.

Physicists analyze systems. Web scientists, however, can create the systems.

The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.

My own personal preference is that the consumer, the individual person should be protected because individual people and the difference between individual people and the diversity we have between people on the planet is so important.

When it comes to professionalism, it makes sense to talk about being professional in IT. Standards are vital so that IT professionals can provide systems that last.

It was really hard explaining the Web before people just got used to it because they didn't even have words like click and jump and page.

Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it's all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well.

The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information.

That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon.

I suppose it's amazing when you think how many things people get involved in that don't work.

Any good software engineer will tell you that a compiler and an interpreter are interchangeable.

Most larger companies now see that for the market to grow, Web infrastructure must be royalty-free.

Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here: private ownership vs. open source, and so on.

I basically wrote the code and the specs and documentation for how the client and server talked to each other.

What I do has to be a function of what I can do, not a function of what people ask me to do.

Whatever the device you use for getting your information out, it should be the same information.

I should be able to pick which applications I use for managing my life, I should be able to pick which content I look at, and I should be able to pick which device I use, which company I use for supplying my internet, and I'd like those to be independent choices.

Customers need to be given control of their own data-not being tied into a certain manufacturer so that when there are problems they are always obliged to go back to them.

If you are not on the web, you will have problems accessing services.

The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing.

The important thing is the diversity available on the Web.

Sites need to be able to interact in one single, universal space.

The Web is now philosophical engineering. Physics and the Web are both about the relationship between the small and the large.

Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.