The inventor of the World Wide Web shares his vision of what it could be like in the future, not just sharing documents, pictures and such, but data... all kinds of data, linked, open for sharing and usage, and what that could mean for us all.

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He leads the World Wide Web Consortium, overseeing the Web's standards and development.

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

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Twenty years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee wrote his original proposal for a better kind of linked information system. He was doing consulting for CERN in Switzerland, and found that its communication infrastructure was leading to information loss. So he proposed a solution using something called Hypertext. This led to the Hypertext Markup Language, or, as it’s more commonly known now, HTML. That in turn, led to the World Wide Web.Berners-Lee openly admits he had no idea that his idea would explode the way it has. The Internet existed before the World Wide Web, but it wasn’t very user friendly, the web made it accessible to everyone. CNET’s Charles Cooper has more on the history. And below find a talk Berners-Lee gave at the TED conference earlier this year about the creation of the web, and where he thinks it’s heading next.