In this season finale, our guest is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. Tim is a professorial fellow of computer science at the University of Oxford and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He directs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the web. He also co-founded the World Wide Web Foundation and founded the Open Data Institute and the Web Science Trust. In 2004, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for services to the global development of the Internet. 

In this episode, Tim talks about the interdisciplinary nature of web science and the future of the web. He discusses misuse of the web, including the production of fake news and violent discourse, and hypothesizes ways to encourage more collaborative and democratic processes on the web and to hold social networks accountable. Finally, Tim discusses his efforts to decentralize the web – again – and his role in helping to create an ecosystem of institutions that nurture the growth of the web. 

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and here for this episode’s show notes.

Photo credit: Henry Thomas