Thirty‑five years ago today, the World Wide Web quietly flickered into existence — a simple idea from Tim Berners‑Lee that would go on to reshape nearly every aspect of modern life. What began as a tool for sharing scientific documents became the backbone of global communication, commerce, culture, and creativity. It connected billions of people, collapsed distances, and rewired how we learn, work, and socialize.
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But as Berners‑Lee reflects on the web’s anniversary, he’s also sounding an alarm. His vision was a free, open, decentralized network — a place where information flowed without gatekeepers and where users controlled their own data. Today’s reality looks very different. As he put it, “trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web.”
The modern web is dominated by platforms that thrive on surveillance‑driven advertising, behavioral profiling, and algorithmic control. Instead of users owning their digital identities, corporations do. Instead of open protocols, walled gardens define the experience. Instead of privacy by default, data extraction has become the norm.
Yet the anniversary is also a reminder of the web’s resilience. Despite its flaws, it remains the most powerful tool for global expression ever created. Independent creators, open‑source communities, educators, activists, and everyday users continue to push the web toward the openness Berners‑Lee imagined. Decentralized technologies, privacy‑focused tools, and user‑owned platforms are gaining momentum.
The web changed the world in an instant — and it’s still changing. The question now is whether the next 35 years will bring us closer to Berners‑Lee’s original vision or further away from it.