# Tim Berners-Lee

Inventor of the World Wide Web and advocate for a decentralized, machine-readable, user-controlled web.

**Tim Berners-Lee** (b. 1955) invented the World Wide Web at CERN, writing the first browser, server, and the HTTP/HTML/URL standards. He has since championed a decentralized, user-controlled web.

## Key works in the library

- [Information Management: A Proposal](/docs/information-management-proposal.md) (1989) — the proposal that became the Web.
- [The Semantic Web](/docs/semantic-web.md) (2001) — a web of machine-readable meaning.

## Significance

Berners-Lee built a Web that was decentralized by default — no permission to publish or link. The Independent Internet argues that property eroded and must be rebuilt; his [Semantic Web](/wiki/semantic-web.md) work is the bridge toward Web 4.0. The HTTP he authored is not frozen: it still evolves in the open under the [IETF](/wiki/ietf.md) — for example the [QUERY method](/docs/rfc-10008-http-query.md) (RFC 10008, 2026).

---

## Backlinks

Pages that link here:

- [The Semantic Web](/docs/semantic-web.md) — Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila's vision of a machine-readable web of meaning — the 'Read-Write-Own' turn.
- [Decentralization Across the Lineage](/wiki/decentralization-across-the-lineage.md) — How one move — removing the central intermediary — recurs from Licklider's network through the Web and Bitcoin to the Independent Internet.
- [Decentralization](/wiki/decentralization.md) — Designing systems with no central owner or single point of control — the structural core of the Independent Internet.
- [Information Management: A Proposal](/wiki/information-management-proposal.md) — Berners-Lee's CERN memo proposing a decentralized web of typed nodes and links — the document the World Wide Web grew from.
- [The Semantic Web](/wiki/semantic-web.md) — A web of machine-readable meaning where software agents can act on data, not just display it — the bridge toward Web 4.0.
- [Ted Nelson](/wiki/ted-nelson.md) — Information theorist who coined 'hypertext' and 'hypermedia' and argued, decades before the personal computer, that computing power must belong to individuals.
- [Independent Internet (Web 4.0)](/wiki/web4.md) — The web forgot who it was for. Web 4.0 — the Independent Internet — is a resilient, self-hosted internet people own and control. Explore the research.