Recanati-Kaplan Talks

Tim Berners-Lee: The Invention of the World Wide Web

with Camille Francois and former Vice President Al Gore

Oct 06, 2025

Please submit questions for the speakers in the chat starting on October 6 at approximately 7:30 pm ET.

In 1989, technologist Tim Berners-Lee invented a system of sharing information over computers that he called the World Wide Web, and distributed it for no commercial reward. It changed just about everything — including the human species — forever.

Join him for an urgent conversation with Columbia University’s Camille Francois about the past, present, and future of the internet and AI — and his new chronicle of the web’s earliest days, This is For Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web.

Through the web, we live, work, dream, quarrel, and connect. It has launched a new era of creativity and collaboration while unleashing powerful forces that imperil truth and privacy and polarize public debate. As artificial intelligence supercharges the online experience, the stakes of understanding the web’s origins and evolution, and guiding its future, have never been greater.

Hear Berners-Lee tell the story of how the World Wide Web as we know it came into being — and how our digital lives can be reengineered for the sake of human flourishing, rather than for the profit and power of the few.

This program is part of 92NY Recanati-Kaplan Talks.
In partnership with Columbia University SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics
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