Web inventor Berners-Lee to answer your questions in Reddit AMA
Tim Berners-Lee, the man who pioneered the World-Wide Web, is hosting an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit today, the 25th anniversary of his invention.
"I invented the WWW 25 years ago", says Internet pioneer Berners-Lee when announcing the AMA, "and I am concerned and excited about its future."
The AMA takes place today, 12 March, at 7pm GMT.
Possible posers already posted on Reddit include questions asking for Berners-Lee's thoughts on governments undermining the openness and privacy of the Internet, his thoughts on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and whether a patent on the Web in the early days may have changed the face of online corporate monoliths like Google and Facebook.
CNET chatted with Berners-Lee this week, where he suggested "the anniversary gives us a chance to look back but it also serves as a way to look forward... Now everybody gets to think about human rights on the Web. What sort of Web do you want over the next 25 years? Are you satisfied with what you've got -- or with what you might get if you're not careful?"
"We've got big companies and big governments," he continues. "Now in some countries the corporations and the governments are very hard to tell apart. I'm concerned about that."
'The art of the century'
And Berners-Lee highlights the difficulty and importance of balancing security with accessibility, describing how adding "a nice user interface to a secure system is the art of the century."
British-born Tim Berners-Lee proposed "a universal linked information system" on 12 March 12, 1989 while working at CERN, laying the foundations for the Internet we know and love. Today, he's the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body that steers the Web's standards and technology towards openness and accessibility.
What are your memories of the early days of the Internet? Share your memories of the past -- and concerns for the future -- in the comments, and check out our series celebrating a colourful quarter-century from dial-up and first kisses to the Internet we know and love.