Building and Preserving the Web: Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Brewster Kahle

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Brewster Kahle will be in conversation about the rise of the internet, its continuing and explosive impact on society, the importance of the Internet Archive and other developing issues in the growth and use of the internet.

Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web, HTML, the URL system and HTTP. Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989 and implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the internet in mid-November of that year. He devised and implemented the first web browser and web server and helped foster the web's subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the web. With Rosemary Leith he co-founded the World Wide Web Foundation. In April 2009, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.

Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, is a passionate advocate for public internet access. He has spent his career intent on a singular focus: providing universal access to all knowledge. Soon after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kahle helped found the company Thinking Machines, a parallel supercomputer maker. In 1989, Kahle created the internet's first publishing system, called the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS). In 1996, Kahle founded the Internet Archive, and he co-founded Alexa Internet, which helped catalog the Web.

SPEAKERS

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, HTML, the URL system and HTTP

Brewster Kahle, Founder, Internet Archive

Moderator: Lauren Goode, Senior Correspondent, Wired; previously with The Verge, Recode, and The Wall Street Journal

Introduction by Gerald Anthony Harris, President, Quantum Planning Group; Chair, Technology & Society Member-led Forum, Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

7 p.m. doors open & check-in
7:30–8:30 p.m program
(all times Pacific Time)

Berners-Lee photo courtesy Macmillan UK; Kahle photo courtesy Internet Archive.

All ticket sales are final and nonrefundable.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Commonwealth Club, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, United States