Tim Berners-Lee launches “WWW Foundation” at IGF 2009

Tim Berners-Lee waved his iPhone playfully at the podium, then gave a boyish grin, touched its face, and instantly and wirelessly sent a message to the world, announcing the launch of the World Wide Web Foundation.

If that doesn’t seem amazing, you have to think about the context. Just 40 or so years ago, in 1969, the Internet was getting off the ground as a simple connection between two computers. By the end of 1997, almost 30 years later and eight years after Berners-Lee invented the Web, 1.7 percent of the global population—70 million people—had used the Internet. In 2009, the International Telecommunication Union estimated that Internet users jumped to 1.9 billion people, 26 percent of the global population.

Now, Berners-Lee has a new project. The World Wide Web Foundation advertises itself as an incubator “leading transformative programs to advance the Web as a medium that empowers people to bring positive change.”

The place Berners-Lee chose to officially launch the new foundation was the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). This UN-facilitated event brings people of the world together to conduct informational dialogues about Internet policy. The smiling Berners-Lee was standing in a palms-surrounded conference center in Sharm El Sheikh, in the Sinai Desert.

Sir Tim had the perfect audience for his announcement of a foundation born to investigate and enhance social opportunities brought by connectivity. Among the more than 1,200 people gathered in the magnificent conference center in Sharm were Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo; Robert Kahn, a co-inventor of the Internet protocol; Hamadoun Tour?, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union; Lynn St. Amour, president and CEO of the Internet Society; and Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers.

Who knows where things might have gone if use of the Web was limited to those who could afford pay per play, or if it was limited only to those who wrote applications approved through a proprietary system? One of the key reasons the Web’s evolution has been so positive for the world is the fact that Berners-Lee chose not to charge a royalty.

Berners-Lee said the Web Foundation was the next logical step in a progression that he has led to nurture his invention. First, he started the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, to assure that the Web would scale upward appropriately and be adjusted to the needs of global users in regard to standards and interoperability. Next, he began to take a look at the science of the Web as a network—the Web Science Trust. The just-announced third initiative is a start-up of sorts that is being largely underwritten by the Knight Foundation.

Berners-Lee said the planning for the new foundation has been in the works for quite some time, and it has involved input from many people who are also involved in work with the Internet Governance Forum.

“When we look at the Web, we don’t look at it anymore as connected computers or as connected Web pages,” he explained. “We look at the Web now as humanity connected. Humanity connected by technology. We want it to empower people. We want it to do the very best for humanity.”

Internet Governance Forum

This is a turning point for Berners-Lee, and for the Internet Governance Forum. At this annual gathering, people from industry, government, and the research and civil society sectors discuss the policies and the politics of control and access in an informal setting where no rules are made, no pronouncements passed along.

“A common set of values and principles has always characterized the development and operation of the Internet,” said Lynn St. Amour, president and CEO of the Internet Society. “Open standards, freely accessible, inclusive processes and transparent governance have always been part of its evolution. Internet governance by definition must be open and inclusive. We’re obliged to assure these fundamental principles endure.”

The IGF was born out of global deliberations at two meetings of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), hosted by the ITU earlier this decade. This year’s IGF is the fourth of a series of five that were suggested in the initial agreements signed by the participants in WSIS. The meeting is a watershed moment as the people at IGF this year are tasked to show if there’s a reason to continue the forums beyond the fifth year.