Tim Berners-Lee: 25 years on, the Web still needs work

A Q&A with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet.

Twenty-five years ago, on March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed "a universal linked information system" to help itinerant academics from across the globe run a complicated particle accelerator. Boy, did the World Wide Web ever exceed those initial expectations. For Berners-Lee, the job is nowhere near done. His to-do list includes reining in governmental spying, ensuring personal privacy, getting people to look beyond their own narrow cultural interests, and reshaping the Web into a better foundation for software instead of just documents. Berners-Lee spoke about what he sees as the Web's next priorities.