Berners-Lee announces the WWW Foundation

The man who invented the web about 20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee, announced yesterday the World Wide Web Foundation, a non-profit with the mission of advancing one free and open web, expanding its capabilities and robustness, and extending its benefits to all people on the planet.

With an initial $5 million funding over the next 5 years provided by the Knight Foundation (a journalism and community empowerment non-profit), the W3F is headed by Steve Bratt and is currently in the planning phase with early 2009 as the targeted launch time frame.

Here are some highlights of Berners-Lee speech:

Understanding and accounting for the social side of the Web was, and remains, a vital part of encouraging its growth.

For example, it took 18 months for my colleague Robert Cailliau and me to persuade the CERN directors not to charge royalties for use of the Web. Had we failed, the Web would not be here today.

…

It became apparent that for all the interesting work being done around the Web, the analysis and engineering of the Web itself — humanity connected — was not recognised as an object of study. We did not have the right journals for research results, nor the right courses. A few of us at MIT and at Southampton University in the UK realised we had to define a new field, Web Science, and make it happen.

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Future technology should be smarter and more powerful, of course. But you cannot ethically turn your attention to developing it without also listening to those people who don’t use the Web at all, or who could use it if only it were different in some way. (I have read that 80% of the world do not have access to the Web. ) The Web has been largely designed by the developed world for the developed world. But it must be much more inclusive in order to be of greater value to us all.

…

A few years ago I chatted with a woman involved in relief work in war-ravaged areas. I wondered aloud whether Internet access should be low on the priority list after clean water, and other critical resources. She responded by telling me the story of a young man who had taught himself English, and with a connection to the Internet, how he set up his own translation business. This business provided income for the village as well as opening up new communications opportunities. I learned that I should not prioritize for others. Instead, I should listen to their concerns and opportunities and then do what I can to help.

You can read the complete Berners-Lee speech at the Web Foundation’s site, or watch the video version uploaded to Vimeo.

There are strong commonalities between Mozilla and the Web Foundation missions, so we may see some collaboration between both foundations in the future.