Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web at CERN in the late 1980s. Fast forward a few decades and the web has over 5.5 billion users. It has revolutionised everything from how we communicate to how we shop. Modern life is unimaginable without it. But it’s not without its problems, too. He believed the more you could link information and people together, the more you could unlock new forms of human creativity. But it has also unleashed misinformation and polarisation at scale. Authoritarian states use the web to ruthlessly keep their citizens in line. And AI threatens to make it impossible to tell the difference between human and machine, fact and fiction.

It would be easy to understand if the web’s inventor felt a bit sour about what humanity has done with his work but he’s far from it. He is extraordinarily optimistic about the future and the future of the web. As one of the most influential technological thinkers of our time, he has a lot to say on what’s gone wrong and how to fix it.

00:00 – Intro
00:58 – Inventing the web
05:38 – The things I got right about the web
06:50 – Domain name disaster
08:13 – What’s wrong with the web
11:11 – How to improve the addictiveness of the web
12:50 – AI, superintelligence and the web
17:00 – Protecting your data & AI that works for you
21:17 – The intention economy
23:35 – Staying optimistic and building a better world
24:16 – The future of the web
25:13 – Yes, I accept cookies

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