The Web's Future

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is helping to create the World Wide Web Foundation, a new organization that will certify Web sites it finds to be trustworthy and a reliable source of information. Berners-Lee says there needs to be a new system that will give Web sites a label for trustworthiness once they have proven to be a reliable source. "On the Web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he says. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging." Berners-Lee and colleagues at the World Wide Web consortium examined simple ways of branding Web sites, but concluded that a whole variety of different mechanisms are needed. In addition to creating a trustworthiness rating, the World Wide Web Foundation also will strive to make it easier for people to get online. Currently, only 20 percent of the world's population has access to the Web. The foundation also will explore ways of making the Web more mobile-phone friendly, which will increase its use in Africa and other developing parts of the world where there are few computers but plenty of handheld devices. The foundation also will examine how the Web can be used to benefit those who cannot read or write. "We're talking about the evolution of the Web," Berners-Lee says. "When something is such a creative medium as the Web, the limits to it are our imagination."