HYDERABAD, INDIA: “The principles of a democracy where all are equal –  immaterial of race, colour, class, wealth or nation – is embodied in the web today,” said Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, who is also the director of World Wide Web conference, delivering the keynote address on ‘Designing the Web for open society' at the 20th International World Wide Web Conference here.

Web should support education, industry, and social life

Referring to Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam's keynote at the same conference on Wednesday, he said, web is a great tool to connect the unconnected. "Dr. Kalam said what India needs from Internet, which has 700 million population living in 600,000 villages. The way democracy lies on the social platform, web should support education, industry, and social life.

Right to the Internet a human right

Sir Tim Berners-Lee felt it was increasingly the need of the people across the geography to consider access to the Internet a right as much as any other civil right. Already, Finland has accepted the right to the Internet as a human right," he said. 

Talking on the recent revolution in Egypt, Tim Berners-Lee said web is a powerful tool if used rightly. “It was important to progress towards the idea of the Internet as a neutral media that was not controlled by large corporates or governments."

Referring to Egypt's recent revolution, Tim Berners-Lee said, "Today Egypt is communicating online with the people. The common man is in a position to give feedback to the government. However, web should reconnect with the data in a short span of time if Internet is disconnected or cut-off."

The web has only grown as fast as it has. Information on the web doubles in every 10 months. Web can become a medium to provide open government implying greater transparency, allowing the way the country operates to become very apparent and enables people to hold the government accountable, he said.

“When it comes to privacy, people should respect the system of making world a better place and connected. There should also be a mechanism or system built into web application to escalate any concern,” added the inventor of Web.