The World Wide Web celebrates its 30th anniversary and its creator claims to be a free and open space.

The World Wide Web celebrates its thirtieth anniversary on March 12th. Its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, reflected on the Internet by highlighting the challenges facing governments and society in general to "make the Web accessible to everyone" against the digital divide and other network risks.

On March 12, 1989, in Geneva (Switzerland), from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known by its acronym CERN), the English scientist Invented the WWW, the global computer network which serves to distribute information between computers – and later on other devices – via the Internet.

"Suppose all the information stored on any computer can be linked in. Suppose I can program my computer to create a space in which everything can be linked to any other," said Tim Berners -lee the idea that gave birth to the concept of the World Wide Web thirty years ago.

In this proposal written by the computer in 1989, in which he was already using terms now called "hypertext", his boss at the time at CERN, Mike Sendall, he considered it a vague idea, but interesting. "

From there, the Internet gathered achievements. in 1990, CERN launched the first website running on the first server, created by the same Tim Berners-Lee, the NeXT, in 1997, WiFi is invented and in 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch Google. Then, in 2004, Facebook was born. In 2005, the first video was uploaded to YouTube. In 2006, the first tweet was published. So until 2016, when global Internet traffic reached 1 Zetta byte.

Currently More than half of the world's population has an Internet connection.

The three major challenges of the network

Its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, reflected on this day by stating that "It is essential to make the Web accessible to all"since, at each new site, "the gap between those who are connected and those who are not, increases", despite the progress made by their invention.

In the same spirit, Berners-Lee has identified three "sources of dysfunction" which affect the network and to which the sector must respond.

The first of these is constituted by "malicious and deliberate attempts", among which the creator of the Web has put forward piracy, state-sponsored attacks, criminal behavior and online harbadment. .

Added to this is another source of dysfunction, such as "systems creating perverse incentives and sacrificing the interests of the user", such as "clickbait" or misleading advertising.

Finally, Berners-Lee referred to "benevolent conceptions inadvertently generating negative consequences", among which the Network pioneer particularly wanted to mention "the tone and the atrocious and polarized quality of online speech". current ".

The computer scientist admitted that, like the Internet, it offered innumerable benefits, it also favored the appearance "of scammers, gave voice to those who spread hatred and facilitated the realization of all types of crimes ".

New contract for the Web

The Web Foundation, the foundation created by Berners-Lee to promote the Open Web as a fundamental right, works with governments, businesses and citizens to develop a new contract that sets clear standards, laws and standards who support the network and develop the specific commitments of each area.

Both governments, as businesses and citizens have an obligation to protect this new platform in the way that they can; Governments must adapt laws to the digital age and, according to Berners-Lee, ensure that markets remain competitive, innovative and open, and protect people's rights and freedoms online.

Companies must do more to ensure that their short-term benefits are not detrimental to human rights, democracy, scientific facts or public safety, taking into account privacy, diversity and security, according to this new contract.

Citizens must, in turn, hold businesses and governments accountable for the commitments they have made and ask them to respect the Web as a global community whose citizens are the center.

Tim Berners-Lee has completed his reflection by claiming that "the fight for the Web is one of the most important causes of our times", so "the contract for the Web should not be a list of solutions quick, but a process a change in the way we design our relationship with our online community. "