Tim Berners-Lee
medium.com/@timberners_lee · Personal blog · on HN since 2017
Tim Berners-Lee's Medium posts on the state of the web, its anniversaries, open letters, and the Solid project.
What HN saysHN links it for his Solid announcement and open letters; one commenter says his letter misses whether public knowledge should be enclosed by private companies.
18HN people shared it
3linked it in comments
15stories submitted
121story points
3 months agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1One Small Step for the Web…10 people · 53 points · first shared 2018 · 3 comments on HN
- 2Marking the Web's 35th Birthday: An Open Letter by Tim Berners-Lee3 people · 7 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 3The web is under threat. Join us and fight for it. – Tim Berners-Lee2 people · 8 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
- 4Tim Berners-Lee: Act now to save the internet as we know it1 people · 50 points · first shared 2017 · 5 comments on HN
- 5One Small Step for the Web…1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
yarapavan · 2018-09-29
His blog post announcing solid - https://medium.com/@timberners_lee/one-small-step-for-the-web-87f92217…
atlasunshrugged · 2018-09-29
From his Medium post "In 2009, I said, “The web as I envisaged it we have not seen yet.” That was because people were using the web just for documents, not for the data of a big web-wide computer. Since then, we have seen a wave of open data, but not of read-write data. For example, much open government data is produced through a one-way pipeline, so we can only view it. With Solid, it becomes a read-write web where users can interact and innovate, collaborate and share."
https://medium.com/@timberners_lee/one-small-step-for-the-web-87f92217…
DrScientist · 2026-07-28
The letter misses out the key issue here.
Should the worlds public knowledge be enclosed by a few powerful private companies or should it be available to all?
The original vision for the web was a decentralized, open information sharing space designed to empower humanity. In my view the effort to privatise that via LLM distillation is the antithesis of that vision.
https://medium.com/@timberners_lee/marking-the-webs-35th-birthday-an-o…
In terms of the risks mentioned in the letter - I agree with the risk of AI enabling a powerful surveillance state - however I don't see that as a solely Chinese problem.
The other risk mentioned - that knowledge can be dangerous - sure - but ultimately here, as there are so many low tech ways to cause mayhem, the ultimate protection is to have a society where people don't want to do it.
And perhaps more importantly I'd note that the primary tool to justify a powerful surveillance state is the fear of terrorism ( and others ).