Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Hermione Lee, College President, commented on Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s achievement as the founder of the World Wide Web consortium and the World Wide Web Foundation and on how his invention has affected the way we learn and assimilate knowledge. 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee stated that he was honoured to be asked to give the talk on the College’s 50th anniversary, especially at a time when openness and liberty of thought are so relevant. He talked about the Web’s development, email use, linked data and social machines in relation to how people have tended to treat technological and legal developments separately from social discourse. 

Sir Tim’s work and thoughts were observed to be very close to the philosophy of College founder Isaiah Berlin – with his focus on pluralism and openness – and to the College motto, Humani nil alienum (nothing human is alien to me).