This year marks the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web, which launched into the public domain on 30 April 1993, transforming the internet from a difficult-to-navigate text-based space into the vibrant online canvas used today. The brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee, a 37-year-old researcher at a physics lab in Switzerland, the World Wide Web was designed to tie together the daily life of computer users by making information accessible through one platform. Berners-Lee convinced CERN to release the World Wide Web into the public domain without patents or fees, a decision he has since attributed to the runaway success of the web.
Since its launch, the web has revolutionized how people communicate, gather, work and learn, while expanding the reach of propaganda and disinformation and upending privacy standards. Berners-Lee predicted some of these ramifications, stating that the important thing was for users to be able to tell when information was biased or not, and he has overseen the development of the web to maintain its neutrality as a platform through his position as director of the World Wide Web Consortium.
