Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has been interviewed by the BBS. An excerpt of the interview is available, but I missed the full thing which was broadcast on TV last Tuesday.
In it he raises some interesting ideas about the nature of the web, despite having a bit of a roasting from the interviewer. But my favourite bit is this, regarding the state of the web in 20 years time:
Similarly the web will be, hopefully, will be something which is sunk into the background as an assumption. Now, if as technologists develop, we’ve done our job well, the web will be this universal medium, which will be very, very flexible. It won’t, itself, have any preconceived notions about what’s built on top.
One of the reasons that I want to keep it open like that, is partly because I want humanity to have it as a clean slate. My goal for the web in 30 years is to be the platform which has led to the building of something very new and special, which we can’t imagine now.