Tim Berners-Lee — "Governments must treat the internet as a basic utility—like water."
Governments must treat the internet as a basic utility—like water.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Tim Berners-Lee
"I was really annoyed when I found out people were using the web to look at pornography."
"The web is a work in progress. We need to keep working on it to make it better."
"The web was designed to be a universal space of information, not a collection of walled gardens."
"The web is a mirror of us. We have to make sure it reflects our best qualities."
"The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate and collaborate. That's not what happened. It became a read-only medium, and then it became a read-wr…"
About Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955)
British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989 and founded the W3C, championing open web standards. Closely associated with Vint Cerf (TCP/IP co-creator and 'father of the internet') and Marc Andreessen (Mosaic browser creator and Netscape co-founder). For an intellectual contrast, see Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook (Meta) founder — Zuckerberg's walled-garden Facebook is the canonical contemporary opposite of Berners-Lee's open-web vision; Berners-Lee's Solid project and 'recapture the web' essays are explicitly written as a rebuttal to the platform-monopoly model Facebook pioneered.
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: deepseek
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Internet access should be treated as an essential public service, not a luxury or commodity subject to market forces. Like water, it is necessary for modern participation—in education, commerce, healthcare, and civic life. Governments should guarantee universal, affordable access rather than leaving it entirely to private providers, who may exclude the poor or throttle service for profit.
Relevance to Tim Berners-Lee
Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and deliberately declined to patent it, making it a global commons. Through the World Wide Web Foundation, he campaigned for universal access as a human right. Having built the web as open infrastructure for all, his insistence that governments—not just markets—must guarantee access is the logical culmination of his life's defining act.
The era
By the 2010s and 2020s, net neutrality battles raged in the US and Europe while authoritarian governments routinely shut down internet access during protests. Billions remained offline despite smartphones spreading rapidly. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how digital exclusion meant educational and economic exclusion. Broadband debates, global digital divides, and ISP monopoly power made the utility-framing politically urgent.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].