30 years ago the world changed forever

In March 1989, while at CERN, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote “Information Management: A Proposal” outlining the World Wide Web. 30 years ago today, Tim's memo was about to revolutionize communication around the globe.

Today we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Web and in a few months, we will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the W3C developing open standards and guidelines that foster innovative applications, profitable commerce, and the free flow of information and ideas.

Committed to core values of an open Web that promotes innovation, neutrality, and interoperability, W3C and its community are setting the vision and standards for the Web, ensuring the building blocks of the web are open, accessible, secure, international and have been developed via the collaboration of global technical experts.

Today we celebrate a Web that is:

• Universal, International and truly “World Wide”.
• Available on any device, for any type of information, in any language.
• Accessible by people with disabilities.
• Royalty-free and built on open standards.
• Powerful – The Open Web Platform makes Web pages themselves powerful tools.
• Transformational for how business gets done; improving delivery, enhancing user satisfaction, and reducing cost.

Listen to what Sir Tim Berners-Lee said when asked what part of the W3C's work he's the most proud of:

 

https://media.w3.org/2019/03/web30_timbl_w3c_subtitled.mp4

We extend our gratitude to our Director, Tim Berners-Lee, for his invention and all his work to keep the Web open, available, international and accessible to all. We thank our Members and wide community for all their work together to help shape the future of the Web, making W3C a place of innovation, technical vision, and unparalleled collaboration.

We are looking forward to the future and what we will continue to build for the Web - one web, on everything, for all.

W3C CEO, Jeff Jaffe made the following remarks to note this momentous anniversary. 'W3C was established 25 years ago by Tim to "Lead the Web to its Full Potential". Seeing the remarkable change that the web has wrought, we are honored that the W3C community has played some role in this. At the same time, we look forward to the further enrichment of society that continued innovation places in front of us.'

In a Web@30 event organized in collaboration with CERN, the World Wide Web Foundation and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, together with other Web pioneers and leading experts, will explore the challenges and opportunities of innovative technologies, past, present, and future. The event will be broadcast (7 a.m. to 9 a.m. UTC).

If you feel so inclined, join us in celebrating by sharing in a comment your Web success story, or write your own blog post or tweet about #Web30.