- [Narrator] Sir Tim Berners-Lee says he did not have a Eureka moment in 1989. The invention of the web came after years of learning from his experience on various projects. He recognized the frustration and complications of trying to share information from different computer systems, and wanted to solve the dilemma. Finally, while working at CERN in Geneva, he did.

- When I was at CERN I had all those pieces sort of in my brain from other projects. Couldn't we just make one, can't we just imagine a grand, unified documentation system which would include them all, and it shouldn't be that difficult and it wasn't, it was a very, you know, web is a very simple system.

- [Narrator] Today, the web is considered one of computing's most influential innovations. It is used by billions of people daily to communicate, access information, and perform and share countless activities. To make such an information-sharing system possible, Berners-Lee invented the integrated tools that would become the foundation of the world wide web: HTTP, URLs, HTML, and the web browser. The web was also intended to allow individuals to share information to solve world problems.

- How does humanity come up with interesting idea when the problem is in lots of peoples' heads, and different parts of the solution are in different peoples' heads, and they are all sitting, looking at their screens, ready to type, ready to chat, ready to code up visualization software, ready to run programs, they will look for correlations, they're trying to solve cancer, you're trying to solve global warming. Part of the goal of the web was to be a really powerful tool for allowing many brains to be better than one brain.

- [Narrator] Berners-Lee warns there is a constant threat surrounding control of the web.

- Some unholy mix of governments and companies often tries to control the web. So we always have to be aware of that.

- [Narrator] And the web hasn't turned out exactly as he had hoped. On the 28th anniversary of the web earlier this year, Berners-Lee cited issues with losing control of our personal data, the spread of misinformation, and the need for transparency with online political advertising.

- For the first twenty years of the web it was really exciting to see all the things, all the crazy things like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, people building on top of the web. And my assumption was that if we just keep the web open, just keep it neutral, keep it royalty-free, then innovation will bloom, and people would build really, really valuable social systems for both science and democracy. Now, looking back just over these last couple of years, there are obviously people have been using the web in some ways where it isn't about science, it's about untruths, it isn't about democracy, it's about unreasonable, just manipulation of the audience, so, yeah, I think, so my attitude has changed. I feel that people who look at the web and analyze the web, build the web, need to think about that, and they need to really look at the way social networks, work, and they need to take responsibility when they build a social network for making, looking at the bad things that happen on them, and maybe reprogramming it, sort of just changing it so that it works in a slightly different way.

- [Narrator] Despite these challenges, the world wide web has had an enormous impact on our society. And ACM recognizes the web as a contribution of lasting and major technical importance. It is for this reason Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been named recipient of the 2016 A.M. Turning Award on the 50th anniversary of the prize.

- Winning the Turing Award is very humbling. I think, if I could suddenly meet Alan Turing now, the first thing I'd do would be apologize for what happened to him, what the British culture at the time did. I'd explain to him that actually that being gay is okay now. And that we're not in a perfect place but we've come a long way. Obviously it would be great to talk about, we could just just sit him down with a with a powerful debugger so he could just see all the variables at the height of the language change in real time.

- [Narrator] In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth the Second for his work. He has received many other prestigious accolades, but one that he remembers in great detail is his honor at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, where he reminded the world that the web is for everyone.

- The whole thing was done at the stadium, and I said can I tweet that at the same time? And I felt that when I was pressing that button, I was doing that for all the geeks, for all the people who are not gonna end up in that Olympic stadium and enjoy the closing ceremony because you have to be kind of sporty, and I felt like I was a representative of all the software technology world.

- [Narrator] Berners-Lee says it has taken all of us to build the web we have, and now it's up to all of us to build the web we want for everyone.

- If you're a web developer, then it's good to spend 90% of your time developing web pages, developing cool Javascript software and so on, but then maybe for the other 10% of your time you should think about okay, but am I taking for granted the fact that this will have this new web net neutrality? Am I taking for granted that the fact this my users will be able to use my site. Should I actually be joining groups where I get informed about issues. So spending a bit of that time to defend the integrity of the web we're all using. Because, if we just take it for granted, it will go away.

- [Narrator] We feature Sir Tim Berners-Lee in the June 2017 Communications of the ACM.