Web is still in its infancy, says inventor

“What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance,” he said.

“My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet.” The comments came on the anniversary of the announcement by CERN on April 30, 1993 that the World Wide Web could be used by everyone, after Berners-Lee and a colleague persuaded their bosses to provide the programme code for free.

The web — of which the abbreviation www forms the start of all online addresses — is now the ubiquitous network via which information is shared on the Internet. An estimated 165 million websites now exist, the BBC reported.

“The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there,” said Berners-Lee, adding that one day the web will put “all the data in the world” at the fingertips of every user.

But “we have only started to explore the possibilities of (the web),” he said, adding that it was “still in its infancy”.

Robert Cailliau, who worked with Berners-Lee to open up the web, stressed that not all the bosses at CERN were in favour of making the web universally accessible.