In a poignant moment in August 2001, Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web, was flying over the Parthenon in Greece. He was en route to his mentor's funeral. Peering down at the Agora steps where Socrates once philosophised, Berners-Lee turned to his colleague, Jean-Francois Abramatic, with a deep question. He wondered if the world was heading into a new dark age or if liberal democracy was now permanently entrenched.
The Stark Contrast: Web's Selfless Birth vs. Today's Monetised Reality
Abramatic, then chairman of the non-profit consortium managing the web, expressed unwavering confidence in technology strengthening democracy. Less than two weeks later, during a meeting, they watched the news break about the 9/11 attacks. This moment, captured in Berners-Lee's engaging memoir This is for Everyone, highlights the fragile optimism that once surrounded the web—an optimism the author suggests is now echoed in the hype around Artificial Intelligence.
The book reveals Berners-Lee as a rare figure who prioritised human connection over profit. In the early 1990s, he and CERN made the monumental decision to release the source code for the web's protocols—HTTP, HTML, and URL—to the public for free, relinquishing all intellectual property rights. This act of "otherworldly generosity" in 1993 is what allowed the web to grow exponentially to its current 5.5 billion users. It stands in radical opposition to today's landscape, dominated by "tech bros" and data monetisation.
From Akamai's Founder to 9/11: The Web's Human Stories
The memoir is dotted with powerful human stories that shaped the web. One of the most dramatic is that of Daniel Lewin, a brilliant MIT graduate student. After hearing Berners-Lee describe a technical problem, Lewin devised the crucial "consistent hashing" algorithm that allows content to be distributed efficiently across millions of servers. He co-founded Akamai Technologies, a global content distribution giant. Tragically, Lewin died on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, 2001, reportedly while trying to thwart the hijackers.
Berners-Lee also recalls the early web's pure joy, like discovering an archive of Italian Renaissance sheet music online in 1992. He describes feeling as if he were in the Vatican archives himself—a sensation many early users shared when stumbling upon digital treasure troves.
Recognising the Dystopia: Polarisation and the Attention Economy
Despite his inherent optimism, Berners-Lee has long been aware of the internet's dark potential. He warned the BBC's Alan Yentob in the early 2000s that the web would "decimate and supersede" traditional media. After the watershed years of 2016—marked by Trump's election and Brexit—he added "compassion" to his core principles of creativity and collaboration.
He directly criticises the business models of major social media platforms. "The algorithms... prioritised engagement over enjoyment, collaboration or mental health," he writes, describing how fun was replaced by "doomscrolling" through streams of invective and envy-inducing content. He notes it took until December 2025 for the first major social media ban for under-16s to be enacted in Australia, a move met with a toxic response from X owner Elon Musk.
To counter this, Berners-Lee supports robust data privacy laws like the EU's GDPR and champions a new vision through a social enterprise. This project aims to let users store their data in personal "pods," breaking the tech giants' control. A pilot in the Netherlands has already made this a reality for six million citizens.
However, the memoir's solutions can seem idealistic against the current political and social dystopia. The author is neither as philosophical about the internet's cognitive damage as Nicholas Carr (The Shallows) nor as profound on AI as contemporary thinkers. While Berners-Lee remains a believer in an "Athenian democracy for the web," his saintly idealism sometimes clouds the path to practical solutions for the polarised world his creation helped shape.
