Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:47

My castaway this week is the computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. The scale of his achievement is hard to overstate. The web has revolutionized everything from the global economy to politics, changing how we live as individuals and societies. Perhaps he was born to do it. His mathematician parents met at work. They were building one of the first computers, inspired by their contemporary and friend Alan Turing. Tim grew up fascinated by electronics, and although he studied physics at Oxford, he spent his free time building a computer from an old television set. He moved to Switzerland to work at CERN, and it was there in 1989 that he published the paper that led to the birth of the web. In 1991, he created the first website. He was knighted in 2004 and appointed to the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2016, he was given the Turing Award, which finally earned him a place on his proud parents' fridge.

Presenter1:46

He eschewed the chance to make gazillions from his invention, insisting that his employer didn't take royalties either. Instead it should be, as he memorably wrote in Lights That Flickered Round the Stadium at the Olympic opening ceremony in 2012, for everyone. He says, I watched the web grow from something where people had very utopian dreams about it to something where I had to point out to them that this is just a reflection of humanity.

Presenter2:12

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee2:15

Thank you so much for having me.

Presenter2:16

Tim, we're delighted to have you here today, and I want to start with that Olympic moment because it was so special. You were invited by Danny Boyle to take part in the opening ceremony at London twenty twelve, and it was celebrating British innovation throughout the years.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee2:24

To take

Speaker 12:24

Uh

Sir Tim Berners-Lee2:31

What was his pitch to you? His pitch was that this wasn't just going to be a big boastful national thing. It was going to have a tongue-in-cheek. The humour in it was brilliant, the humour with Her Majesty coming down by from a helicopter and so the whole spirit of it was tongue-in-cheek and a lot of fun.

Speaker 12:45

Uh

Presenter2:45

Yeah.

Presenter2:50

It's very moving to watch that opening ceremony back though. What was it like from your point of view? What was it like to be in the middle of that stadium and in the spotlight?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee2:58

I was in a house on the set and I was hidden for initially and the house had a winch so they could lift it up. The house was about the size of this studio. So quite little then, yeah. Ten feet by ten feet, I guess. All the people who had been dancing in the previous act all came streaming through the front door of the house. And so that and each one, they were all wearing different things and they'd each danced the dance of their life. And after that dance, then there was my time when they winched up the house above me and then I typed out this is for everyone and hit return and they then the words went all the way zooming around the stadium and around the world because we treated it as well.

Presenter3:09

So quite little then, yeah. Ten feet by ten feet.

Presenter3:42

I love that. So this is for everyone. How did you settle on that phrase?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee3:47

Well, that was kind of obvious in a way. If you're gonna summarize about the web, the fact that it should be free, it should be for everybody. And and if it's for everybody, it has to be free.

Presenter3:54

Yeah.

Presenter3:57

Were your family able to be there and share the night with you? Were they watching from the stands in the stadium?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee4:02

They were and the McCartney family were a few rows behind them in the sand. Oh, my goodness. And and they were saying to their kids, Well, they're waiting for Tim to come out just like you know, and they were excited just like when we wait for grandpa to come out.

Presenter4:16

Do you know what? There's only you and Paul McCartney probably comparable achievements in creating the Beatles and creating the Web. And what was it like for you being in the spotlight, Tim? You know, you are a self described nerd, so I'm guessing that that's a strange place for you to be in some ways. How did it feel?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee4:32

Very proud actually, because I was more or less the only computer scientist in the whole Olympics.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee4:38

I was representing all of the nerds out there.

Presenter4:42

Oh, you're doing it for the nerds. Love that. And what did you want viewers to take from that moment? You know, those words, like you say, ricocheting around the stadium in lights, this is for everyone.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee4:43

It's not

Sir Tim Berners-Lee4:53

You can take the word for granted most of the time, but then every now and again you may have to fight for it. You may have to fight for its openness.

Presenter5:00

Well, that's something that we might come back to today, I think, because I know that's a big passion of yours. But let me ask you about another passion, music, because of course we're going to be here in your discs. How important is music in your life?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee5:12

Music I think has been in constant thread from listening to records I suppose with mum and dad, going to festival hall, hear classical music when we're kids and then I'm not a good pianist or a good guitarist or a good harmonica player, but I can keep myself occupied with various instruments.

Presenter5:32

And do you see that musical creativity as being analogous to scientific creativity? Do you think they come from the same place?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee5:40

Well, people say that, don't they? They say that if you're a mathematician or a musician, they're very close in the way your brain works. What do you think?

Presenter5:46

What do you think?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee5:48

I don't know.

Presenter5:48

I don't know.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee5:49

I you have to do a lot of scientific experiments to prove that one way or the other.

Presenter5:49

Uh

Presenter5:54

Alright, well let's get stuck into your first discs at Tim Berners-Lee. Your first choice today. What is it and why are you taking it to the island with you?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:02

So my first choice is All Through the Night, which is a song that mum used to sing to us as a lullaby. And so I think for any of our family.

Presenter6:12

Emily

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:13

It was one of her favourite songs.

Presenter6:14

You are one of four, the eldest, right?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:16

I was there as a foyer.

Presenter6:17

Okay, so would you all be tucked up and she would be singing this to you all at once, or did you get the individual treatment? What happened?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:23

I think we get the individual tree.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:26

O Shamrantire Ser the Wednesday.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:39

Dunmar for Livergonyant Arm

Presenter6:46

I wait on

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:52

For Laya Rashim

Speaker 46:56

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee6:58

Yeah.

Speaker 46:58

Kir that was quirkoch.

Speaker 47:05

Tail.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee7:06

Virnoid meant a well.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee7:12

I haven't heard a

Presenter7:19

All Through the Night, sung by Alad Jones with the Clenethly Male Choir and the English Session Orchestra.

Presenter7:26

So there's a Welsh connection with that first disc and that connects to your family, doesn't it?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee7:31

My mum had a Welsh grandmother of Henry Jenkins.

Presenter7:34

Your own creativity must have been inspired by your parents, Mary Leigh and Conway. They were mathematicians, as I mentioned, and met working on one of the first commercially available computers. So that was the Ferranti Mark I, I think.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee7:38

Pony.

Presenter7:46

Tell me a little bit about your mother. How would you describe her?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee7:49

Ooh, she had a twinkle in her eye, and she was shorter than people imagined after they talked to her on the phone.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee7:58

Lots of different facets to her, I suppose. At one point, she'd gone to Australia to work at the Mount Stromblow Observatory, helping them take photographs of the sky. She got a motorbike when she was out there, so she had a tent made from parachute material. I think her experience of being on a motorbike, going out in the bush in Australia, gave her the feeling that she didn't really need anything else. She was tremendously self-sufficient. I think partly going camping with the family again, you know if you're lying on the ground and there's only a tent between you and the planet and you know that's actually all you need.

Speaker 18:26

Yeah.

Presenter8:38

She sounds like she would have been a great castaway, doesn't she? I mean, absolutely extraordinary. And what a spirit of of adventure and a pioneer too. So she got that job working on that early computer, but I know that when she did that, she realized that the women were being paid a lot less than the men. And she she wouldn't stand for that.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee8:55

Uh Well, I think none of them would stand for it, but they decided that Mary Lee would be the one to go and make the case to the bosses. And she made the case successfully, and so she got the the pay of the women raised to be the same as the pay of the men.

Presenter9:03

And she made the case successfully.

Presenter9:09

Well done, her. And what about as a parent? I think she described her mothering style as watchful negligence over you and your siblings.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee9:16

But you're sorry.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee9:16

So that meant being aware of us, but in general just letting us do whatever we want to a certain point.

Presenter9:22

So a free range childhood for you and your three siblings.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee9:23

Childhood

Sir Tim Berners-Lee9:25

With a lot of curiosity.

Presenter9:27

And obviously, you know, an incredibly intelligent woman as well. I know that she constructed a calendar that I think is still on is it your office wall? You have it. How exactly did it work?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee9:35

On

Sir Tim Berners-Lee9:38

So it's like a clock. She'd have a sheet of cardboard and she made a clock with, instead of having the hours of the day around it, it had the days of the year around it. And so every year you'd move the hand by one notch to point to the next day.

Presenter9:54

So 365 days instead of 60 minutes on this clock face.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee9:57

Sixty minutes.

Presenter9:59

Yeah. And then what would she have around it, all of the upcoming birthdays and holidays and things like that?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee10:04

Yep, everything coming up and we've got those sheets of cardboard from each year where you can look back at what was happening.

Presenter10:10

Oh, I love that. So a record of family life. And what about her career then? So a very busy family life, you and your three siblings to bring up. She stopped work when you were born and looked after you. How was she able to go back to work and resume her?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee10:22

Well she fitted in part-time at work. I think there was also a wave of women being starting to work from home when they had kids.

Presenter10:30

What do you remember? What did she do?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee10:31

She was a consultant programmer.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee10:33

So she would code things, she would type up a programme in five hole punch tape.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee10:40

So that was the medium of the that the computer could read. You could hold this pa shape up to light and she could read the what the program would do just by looking at the light shining through the paper paper tape.

Presenter10:51

Oh, paper tape. And as a little boy, how much did you understand about what she was doing?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee10:57

This was the time when they were building the first computers, they were discussing what it actually meant. So an engineering was defining what a computer actually is. And so once you've defined that, because of the imitation game thing, one computer can imitate another.

Speaker 111:06

That is

Sir Tim Berners-Lee11:12

In a way, anything you can do with your computer, I can do with my computer. So it's not a question of what the power of our computer is, only the question of the power of our imaginations. So that I realized that that was a tremendous challenge. She and all her colleagues, all the people who sort of came back to dinner sort of after work, they were excited about this sort of gauntlet thrown down to the whole community. What you can do with the computer is only limited by your imagination.

Presenter11:41

So were you listening to those conversations at the top of the stairs, then, when they were having dinner?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee11:45

You bet.

Presenter11:46

Alright Tim, let's have some more music. It's your second choice today. What are we going to hear?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee11:50

So this one is the irregular as performed by a band called The Daybreakers.

Presenter11:56

And why have you chosen this today?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee11:58

So the Daybreakers album was one which we had around at home. It was folk music, so it was not classical music, songs that you could sing along to. And so checking in with my siblings, I think it was quite a formative thing for all of them. They can all remember the songs on this album, so I picked the first one, The Irai Canal.

Speaker 412:19

On heer eye he was rising and the gin was getting low See a good thing that we get a drink till we get to Buffalo Till we get to buffalo

Sir Tim Berners-Lee12:21

Is it an

Speaker 112:21

Vision was getting low.

Speaker 112:24

We got it.

Speaker 412:29

We're forty miles from Albany, forget it I never shall What a terrible storm we had that night on the Irai Canal Oh the Ira was rising and the gin was getting low

Sir Tim Berners-Lee12:37

ARDIAN

Speaker 412:41

I scarce good thing I begin to

Sir Tim Berners-Lee12:43

Break through again.

Speaker 412:44

Two

Sir Tim Berners-Lee12:44

To Buffalo Till we get to Buffalo

Speaker 412:47

The barge was full of barley and the crew they were f

Presenter12:50

Daybreakers and Eerie Canal. I wonder about your parents' world view. You know, being into folk in the nineteen fifties and I'm imagining that lively dinner table that you described with a computer programmer friends, all of them discussing this new age that was coming. What kind of house was it to grow up in?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee13:09

For me, it was normal. I guess I was really lucky. My dad was also a big part of it. I discussed with him, for example, the question of the fact that computers are good at doing some things, doing things which are very regimented, doing things in tables, but they're not good at doing things in thinking random things. So I think that those discussions with Dad partly may have sown some seeds. He writes speeches for Battle DeFranti, the head of the company.

Speaker 113:29

Don't think.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee13:38

Rattle of Francie would give these speeches and in fact it was dead that written a

Presenter13:41

It was your dad's vision of where the company should go. So tell me more about him then. I know that in the war he was in the corps of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. What was his job?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee13:52

He did electronics. In the war he was in Egypt and at one point he also drove around Petersham fixing the radar sets and so on with a telescope on the back of his motorbike. He was a wonderful guy. He was a little bit absent-minded. Some of the work they had to do in London, some of it was in Manchester. And so there was one time when he was working with the people in Manchester, so he did the sort of commute from London to Manchester and then on the way back he was with his friends on the train, his colleagues. He couldn't find his return ticket stub and all of his colleagues had shown the second offer the ticket and he couldn't find it anywhere. So they explained he was just absent-minded. You'd never steal from the railways. He wouldn't. They let him through. And then he gets home.

Speaker 114:40

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee14:42

And my mother, she says, Conway, where's the car?

Presenter14:50

I see. Okay. That was dad. I've got it. That was dad. And what about when your parents met? You know, they met in their mid-50s. How did it happen?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee14:51

Okay. I've got it. That was dad.

Presenter14:58

Did they tell you?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee14:59

They were in the team that worked in this little tin hut on the side of the Franti computer. There was an electronics factory and Franti put in a tin hut on the side of it. They were one of the couples who met and got married.

Presenter15:14

Oh my goodness. How many Ferranti babies?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee15:15

So that's the thing.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee15:19

Six for anti-babies.

Presenter15:21

At least six of you. Well, that's good to know. It's interesting that the birth of the computer age, it sounds quite lo-fi, the way that you're describing it. They were in a tin hut on the side of the factory, and it was quite a normal family life that you lived. It's not like the digital innovators and the computer innovators of today, where it's people living in gated communities in Silicon Valley. It was a very, much more ordinary kind of life, by the sounds of it.

Speaker 115:31

Messiah

Sir Tim Berners-Lee15:48

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee15:49

I think ordinary with all the positive meanings of the word ordinary.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee15:53

Yes, it was a great idea.

Presenter15:54

Your parents were friends with Alan Turing. Did they ever work with him?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee15:58

No, they were colleagues in that same set of people. They weren't in the same lab.

Presenter16:02

What did they tell you about him?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee16:04

Most of what I heard about was the the unfortunate circumstances around his rejection.

Presenter16:09

The end of his life.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee16:10

Hmm.

Presenter16:10

Yeah. And of course, in twenty sixteen, Tim, you were awarded the Turing Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of Computing. How did your parents mark your achievement?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee16:20

Oh, they loved it. Yeah, they stuck it up on the family fridge along with all the other achievements of my siblings.

Presenter16:27

All right, Tim, let's have some more music. It's your third choice today. What are we going to hear next?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee16:33

So we're going to hear Streets of London by Ralph Mattell.

Presenter16:37

And what does this track mean to you?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee16:38

Well, of all of the things which I sort of learned to play myself after mama gave me a guitar, Streets of London sort of sums them up and it's always been a favourite. Of course for me, the Streets of London weren't being destitute. Streets of London for me were where I went to go and buy transistors to build my computer with. So that was Tottencourt Road. So how can you tell me if you're lonely?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee17:07

And save for you that the sun don't shine

Sir Tim Berners-Lee17:13

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee17:19

Show you something.

Speaker 417:22

Deliki J. Angel My

Presenter17:31

Ralph MacTell and Streets of London. So, Sir Tim Bernersley, you grew up in London and, as you mentioned, would head up to Tottenham Court Road to buy the things that you needed to build electronics. So that was a a lifelong fascination for you.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee17:46

Yeah, well I suppose it started off with when you're in primary school building things with relays.

Presenter17:52

Just in case listeners don't know, what is a relay exactly?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee17:55

Okay, so relay is the most simple electronic device you can imagine. It's either on or off, and it's a relay is made from it has an electromagnet. So when you put power onto the electromagnet, the electromagnet operates the switch. So there's a little switch and a little electromagnet and they're connected together. So when you put power onto the electromagnet, the switch switches. It can switch on or switch off or both. And so it's a way of building logic circuits.

Presenter18:24

Output transcript.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee18:25

Okay. It's the most simplest thing. F as you get b older then you want to do more and more complicated things. So transistors are more effective than readers and then you can build more and more complicated things like an intercom or for the house and so on.

Presenter18:25

Yeah.

Presenter18:37

And you did that. You built an intercom for your family home. How did it work?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee18:41

Basically I went and got some old telephones and put some power on them and catted them and strung a wire from the top of the house to the bottom of the house.

Presenter18:49

Did the family use it?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee18:50

Yes.

Presenter18:50

So you started off with relays and then you went on to create things like this intercom in the house. What else did you build?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee18:59

Well, I had to build a computer. There's a a sort of T V shop down in Barnes where I went down to find uh whether the guy had uh any old T V's, whether screen part will work but the rest of it didn't. He had a whole stack of them, so I took two home. In fact, I put one I had up in my bedroom and the other one I had on the whole table. I had them connected together so whatever signal I could produce, whatever pattern I could produce on the T V, they could see it on the whole table too.

Presenter19:29

Oh, wow.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee19:29

I'd like to see how see my progress.

Presenter19:32

Oh my goodness, so you had that idea of connectivity right from the beginning?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee19:35

Yeah.

Presenter19:36

So you're already thinking about that. And your parents must have obviously encouraged this and I mean allowed it because they must have been quite unwieldy things that you were building, these big old T V screens, quite thick and heavy in those days, I'm guessing.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee19:49

They were well T V s yeah they were these big boxes.

Presenter19:52

So did your parents enc encourage you to pursue this interest?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee19:55

Yeah. And of course they'd done a bit of electronics. Mum had worked at Morvan in the lab there and dad had worked on radar during the war so they'd both done electronics so they could understand and appreciate what I was doing.

Presenter20:07

How wonderful. Did they ever make any suggestions about what you were building?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee20:10

I did get one suggestion once. I was running through the kitchen with my soldering iron and mum stopped me and she said, wait a moment, don't you go around using your soldering iron. This cable was put together so badly. Okay, let me show you how to do that. And I never knew that she knew anything about this sort of stuff. She stopped me and said, okay, let's cut the wire like this.

Speaker 120:23

Love me.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee20:31

Twist it around so that the wires don't touch each other. Tape around th each wire. Now let's put a little flower on it so it isn't sticky. Okay, that's the way to do it.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee20:40

And I said, Mama had it, she said, Well, you know, in the war we used a lot of solder guns.

Presenter20:45

How fantastic. You must have just thought you could do anything, young mum. And in terms of where you were getting the information that you needed, to what extent were you just experimenting and making things up? And to what extent were you able to access guides, buy pamphlets about how to build your own computer at home? Did you just have to make it up?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee21:04

As the level of building of things gets from b individual transistors to integrated circuits, these little chips that you buy in Tottenham Road, those always had manuals. So each chip you bought would have a data sheet about it. And after a while you get to know what they were. So so you could imagine.

Speaker 121:20

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee21:24

As you solder them in, draw diagrams. Like a kind of Lego in a way.

Presenter21:29

Mm.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee21:29

Each chip had a very different function inside, but there were always manuals about that.

Presenter21:35

Tim, after school you went to study physics at Oxford, so there was no computer science degree available back then in the mid seventies. How much did you enjoy your time at university?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee21:45

Yeah.

Presenter21:46

Did you? Totally. What did you love about it? Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee21:48

The independence, I suppose?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee21:50

Be able to

Sir Tim Berners-Lee21:52

chat to whoever and about anything, the just the freedom of being out of away from home and going punting along the Austria rivers.

Presenter21:54

The j

Presenter21:59

And tell me about being born in nineteen fifty five, because you are not the only tech Titan to be born in that lucky year. There's you, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I wondered what it was about your micro generation that made you very well placed to be part of the birth of this new digital age?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee22:17

I think it was the fact that everything got invented at the right time.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee22:21

So when we were in school, in high school, then the transistor got invented. When we were in university, the processor chip got invented. But we could understand about relays when we were in

Sir Tim Berners-Lee22:32

Kindergarten. So my cohort was really lucky. The world invented what it needed as it were just in time.

Presenter22:40

And they were also, it was quite accessible, wasn't it? The components and your ability to do it. You know, you describe you as a kid running around with a soldering iron.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee22:47

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee22:49

And so I need pocket money.

Presenter22:50

Yes, it looks kind of doable.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee22:51

It's going down the topical road, spending pocket money.

Presenter22:54

It's time for some more music. We're going to have your fourth choice, if you wouldn't mind, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. What's next?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee22:59

Fourth one is Alice's Restaurant by Olo Guthrie.

Presenter23:02

Another

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:02

The folk

Presenter23:03

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:03

Another folk song. This one from America. This one very much sort of core of the whole Vietnam processed culture. And it is a wonderful song. It's funny. It's long. You can spend your time trying to learn all the words.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:25

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant.

Speaker 123:29

Uh

Speaker 423:29

Restaurant

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:31

Walk riding it's around the back.

Speaker 423:34

Uh

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:34

Just a hand.

Speaker 423:35

Half a mile drive

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:35

On the railroad track Uh

Speaker 423:37

You can get any

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:38

Then you are. Uh

Speaker 423:40

Good afternoon.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:40

At Alice's restaurant

Speaker 423:41

Red.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:44

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago as on two years ago on Thanksgiving

Presenter23:48

Arlo Guthrie and Alice's Restaurant. It is a long track, that's at Tim Berners-Lee, and I'm told that you can sing the whole thing.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:56

Who told her that?

Presenter23:57

Ah, your wife Roseberry.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee23:57

Uh

Presenter23:59

You know every word, is that true?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee24:01

I did once.

Presenter24:04

You were doing pretty well there, singing along, I have to say.

Presenter24:08

So listen, tell me what happened after graduation. You worked in electronics in the UK, but then you went on to CERN in Geneva for the first time in nineteen eighty. What kind of environment was that to be in?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee24:20

Wonderful. People come from all over the world to

Sir Tim Berners-Lee24:25

put together this big underground accelerator, twenty seven kilometer. So you've got people collaborating from all over the world, speaking different languages, using different sorts of computer as well. So very heterogeneous environment.

Speaker 424:39

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee24:39

So when I arrived there was a feeling of that it was really hard to keep track of what what was going on. In fact the crucial thing was the coffee space. There was a coffee counter at the intersection of four different corridors. You'd pull people out of the flow of the the traffic between the offices to give them a coffee, which of course for somebody from England

Speaker 424:39

Oops.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee25:05

I should have a decent European coffee was already pretty pretty good. But then and maybe even a croissant. But then once you've got this person, this was the way that you found out what was going on.

Presenter25:08

Yeah.

Presenter25:09

Yeah.

Presenter25:16

Right. Okay.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee25:17

Get buy somebody a coffee, talk to them about the bit they designed works, how you can work with them.

Presenter25:24

So obviously, you know, the kind of environment that that gets you thinking and was re really fertile ground for your creative imagination. I know, Tim, that even as a teenager, you'd had a fascination with the idea of connecting machines. When did you start to develop the idea that became the World Wide Web?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee25:43

Well, in fact, the first time I went to CERN, I went there twice. The first time was just for six months. And I wrote a program called Inquire Within Upon Everything, or Enquire for short. So Enquire was a programme which would allow you to type in a note about... This was in the days when computer terminals were boring because of text-only things. It would allow you to make a text note about anything. But it always asks you how the thing that you're talking about is connected to the other thing. So the interesting thing about it was that you could connect together any two things.

Speaker 126:04

Uh

Presenter26:17

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee26:17

In a sort of a a mesh of notes.

Presenter26:17

Yeah.

Presenter26:20

So you were starting that kind of cross-referencing process. And am I right in thinking that that the name of that program, Inquire Within Upon Everything, that was named after a book that you had at home?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee26:22

Referencing program

Presenter26:39

So it was sort of Mrs Beatons, but for the whole home.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee26:41

The whole home. That sort of thing. I see. Okay.

Presenter26:44

So in nineteen eighty nine, Tim, you published a paper that married hypertext with the Internet, and that created this globally accessible information system, and you coined the name the World Wide Web. Did you know at that point that you had a world changing idea on your hands?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee27:00

Well, I wanted it to be global and I wanted to be universal. I couldn't appreciate how successful it would be, but it took off so that the number of hits per day on our first web server went up by a factor of 10 in the first year, and then it went up by a factor of 10 in the next year, and then it went up by a factor of 10 the next year. So then it was a thousand times the original level, and so it looked as though something was going on.

Presenter27:25

Did it take years then when before you realized the the scale of what you've created?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee27:31

There was no one point when you could look back and say, oh, this thing's really taking off, because it took off so exponentially.

Presenter27:39

So there wasn't a moment when it exploded. It's hard to imagine the web being called anything else now, but there were other possible names for it, I think. What what were you considering?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee27:45

But that

Sir Tim Berners-Lee27:49

I thought mine of information would have or the information mine, but the information mine would have been Tim.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee27:55

And that sounded a little bit egocentric.

Presenter27:56

A little bit.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee27:59

And um minor information would have been more.

Presenter27:59

Definitely.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee28:01

Moi wish y mor.

Presenter28:03

Wait.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee28:06

Yeah, mesh I thought about, but that sounded a bit like too messy. So World Wide Web it was. Yes, people complain that the is the World Wide Web itself is bad enough, but www is actually longer, more syllables than the W than the World Wide Web.

Presenter28:23

What were some of the biggest hurdles that you faced in the early days when you were trying to build it and get people connected?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee28:29

Just people understanding what it could be like. You show them, click on a link.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee28:35

And it could go and it goes to something else. But the uh they can't imagine that could go to anything in the world because it's that nobody had ever thought of taking this idea of clicking on links and connecting it to the Internet. And even people who worked on the Internet I say, Hey, you know, why don't you build a uh link clicking thing? And they wouldn't understand why why it'd be useful. And people who worked on hypertext systems asked them to connect the internet and they they said, No, they didn't have time.

Presenter29:01

How did you go about convincing them?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee29:02

So I'd give a talk to a hundred people and there'd be maybe three people.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee29:07

at the front somewhere which would come back and find me. Or somebody would email me. And so bit by bit it would spread through the people who would who got it.

Presenter29:15

You talked about being that kid who went up to Tottenham Court Road to get bits and bobs to solder together to make a computer. And by the sounds of it, the early days of the web weren't that different. You were literally writing the hypertext that still provides the building blocks for the web as we know it today. I know that 404 not found is a great line. It's one of yours. You actually type that out?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee29:36

Yeah, I picked four hundred four as a number. The four hundred codes are error codes. That was a Internet tradition already that used four hundred numbers for errors.

Presenter29:45

Okay.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee29:45

200 means good. 400 means bad. 404 means bad because we can't find the document.

Presenter29:51

Oh, so there's not like an error 403 and 405, either side of it?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee29:55

Otherwise

Presenter29:56

Uh

Sir Tim Berners-Lee29:56

Yeah.

Presenter29:56

Prison for

Presenter29:57

Do you know what they are?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee29:57

Do you know what they are? I just don't get it. 403 is you don't have authorization. What about 405?

Presenter30:01

What about four or five?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee30:02

Uh that I forget.

Presenter30:04

Alright, said Tim Berners-Lee, let's have some more music. Your fifth choice today. What are we going to hear next and why?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee30:10

Diastrates. Then we're gonna hear Brothers in Arms.

Presenter30:13

Why have you chosen this track?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee30:15

All the Diasraits music is is good, but this particular one reminds me of Switzerland. A bit it's got this mist covered mountains line. So the Brothers in Arms for me is uh reminds me a bit of a bit of Switzerland.

Presenter30:28

Misty Switzerland, let's hear it.

Speaker 130:30

These missed cover? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 130:37

Uh

Speaker 430:37

Are all now for me?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee30:43

But now is the home.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee30:49

And always will be

Sir Tim Berners-Lee30:55

Someday you return.

Presenter31:01

Dire straits and brothers in arms. So Tim Berners-Lee, from the very beginning you were determined that the web should be free for everyone to use. Why exactly?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee31:12

Well, it's really important that it's free because otherwise it wouldn't be for everyone. If I'd made it for paything, then there would have been competing systems, they wouldn't have been all been compatible, it has to be universal. The fact that you can click on the link, it can take you anywhere in the world, that's a huge ask.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee31:28

I can't also ask for two cents a click.

Presenter31:30

You'd pioneered this technology while working at CERN. How did you persuade your employers not to insist on taking royalties?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee31:38

That was hard. It took a concerted effort to get them. Eventually we ended up with a certificate stamped by CERN and signed by the director of CERN saying that CERN would pass this into the public domain. That was a crucial stage.

Presenter31:56

And did you ever meet anyone who said to you, you know, during that process what are you thinking? You know, you could make a fortune here. Why are you giving these people up?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee32:05

There were people in CERN who wanted to commercialize it for the sake of European industry. They wanted CERN to spin off a company to do the web. But fortunately they were in the minority.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee32:16

Nasser didn't really know how to do that. So what we had to do, we had to move to MIT and start a consortium of all the companies that did know how to do that.

Presenter32:26

But you knew what you were aiming for. Did it feel like a bit of a revolutionary act to say, I've come up with this idea and I'm going to give it away?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee32:33

No, not really, because all the existing protocols were free already.

Presenter32:38

So the tech billionaires hadn't arrived yet, they were on the way.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee32:42

Okay, ha

Presenter32:43

I see. So Tim, you moved to the States and established the W three Consortium, as you mentioned, at MIT in the mid nineties. What advantages did the university setting bring to what you were doing?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee32:57

So as you say, MIT, but also INRIA. INRIA was the French side lab, also a non-profit, government-funded sort of lab. So MIT knew how to run an industry consortium. It brought to the table being a neutral party. So when Netscape and Microsoft were frantically fighting about which way HTML should go, MIT could rise above that battle, point out to them that it was really important to have one standard.

Presenter33:26

You use the word battle and if people read your book they'll be able to see just how much of a battle it was with rival tech companies in some ways at the time.

Presenter33:35

Were you surprised by that? You know, you seemed to have a very collaborative, open-minded attitude right from the beginning, but others didn't.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee33:43

I understood the commercial pressure. If you're running a company, your company has the bounded duty as a commercial compan entity to maximize its revenue. And to do that, if you can take over the web and dominate the web, whether you're Netscape or Microsoft or Google, still there's always an incentive to become a monopoly.

Presenter34:04

Yeah, but how hard did you have to fight back against that, th th those companies at the time?

Presenter34:08

It wasn't all fighting.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee34:09

Because they understood what was going on. It's a little bit sometimes I think of it's a bit like a boat when you're sailing. Your sailing boat has got a keel which goes into the water and there's a lot of force on the keel from the water. But there's also at the same time there's force in a slightly different direction on the sails. So you've got the force on the sails pushing against the force on the keel and the boat ends up going forwards. And it goes forwards because of the constructive tension.

Presenter34:38

Of course, at this point, you know, access to the internet was limited around the world, and even by 2009, it had only reached 20% of the world's population. I know that you and your wife, Rosemary, launched a foundation aiming to reach the other 80% and get them online. And you visited Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya to see what was happening there. What did you learn on that trip?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee34:59

Well, one thing I should say is that it was great working with Rosemary. Rosemary put a huge amount of effort into that. She's always brought order to my chaos and been a a good intellectual sparring partner. So at the time when we did the that sort of sub Saharan Africa trip, I seem to remember that the

Speaker 135:08

That

Presenter35:08

Yeah.

Speaker 135:08

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee35:19

Fiber optic cable was just arriving in Mombasa.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee35:23

And each country has some more or less so it was going to go from Kenya to Uganda to Rwanda. And I know that Rwanda, they planned to have nine different places where they had it they linked into different countries. So they definitely more wanted it to be a mesh rather than a single fibre cable.

Presenter35:43

And to what extent were the big companies getting in there and flexing their muscles and, you know, trying to lay claim to different places?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee35:51

Well what's interesting you could see who's bought which telephone because they had the which tele type of telephone, mobile telephone. Of course mobile telephone telephone is where most of all the internet connectivity was. And people would paint their houses red or yellow as an advertisement for the phone company. So you go past whole stretches where I guess the phone company must have provided them with a paint so you could see who was willing.

Presenter36:18

It's time for some more music, Sitim Berners-Lee. Your sixth choice today. What are we going to hear?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee36:23

So this one's going to be Four Strong Winds. This is the version by Ian and Sylvia. Some poll of Canadians found that this is like the most Canadian song or something. So this is our collection to Canada. My grandmother was Canadian. My wife is Canadian and every summer we go to Canada to a lake and then we sing songs around the campfire. Do you have your guitar out? Is this one you can play? Four Strong Winds. I so wanted to play it. A few years ago I taught myself a harmony by just listening to it in the car over and over again.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee37:01

Weather is good

Speaker 437:02

There in the fold.

Speaker 437:05

Got some friends that I can go

Speaker 437:09

To work in for

Sir Tim Berners-Lee37:13

Still I wish you'd change your mind.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee37:19

If I asked you one more time

Sir Tim Berners-Lee37:23

But we've been through that a hundred.

Presenter37:27

Ian and Sylvia with four strong winds. So Tim Berners-Lee, how much of your original vision do you see online today?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee37:36

There are some amazing things on the web, but there's also a few things like misinformation and disinformation, and in particular, the things which are addictive.

Presenter37:45

So those are the things you don't like. I mean, starting on a positive note, where do you find that original dream that you had, that more utopian side?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee37:54

There's things like Wikipedia, for example, is collaborative, it's a great resource. And so it's sort of the spirit of the digital web with everybody collaborating together to produce something which is valuable.

Presenter38:06

What about innovations that you couldn't have foreseen?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee38:09

Since then, of course, AI chat GPT has surprised me, the fact that chat GPT was so effective. And I think mum and dad would have been really surprised as well when they were thinking about whether we could make it something which is intelligent.

Presenter38:22

I mean surprised is an interesting word, isn't it? Because there's an ambivalence there.

Presenter38:26

How do you feel about it? Are you optimistic? Are you concerned about AI? There's a lot of concern out there at the moment.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee38:33

Well, there's concern out there about containing something. If we make something which is smarter than us, if you make a superintelligence, then we have to contain it. So I am concerned with that. But at the same time, I'm excited by the new AIs, which, for example, can help scientists and doctors do a diagnosis, scientists design drugs, all that sort of thing. I think is very exciting.

Presenter38:56

What about the negatives, Tim? I mean, you mentioned misinformation. Obviously, there's political polarization, online harassment, that kind of thing. How do you think this type of damaging content should be controlled? What would you like to see?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee39:09

If somebody posts a nasty message and you read it.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee39:14

Then there's two things.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee39:17

to think about there. One of them was why did the person originally post the nasty post? But the other one is why did the algorithm send it to so many people? So there's a I have a suspicion that the algorithms out there are using angry making posts to keep people involved because they're trying to optimize it for engagement.

Presenter39:40

Rage bay, as people call it.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee39:41

Rage baits, indeed. So some people have suggested that you could you know you could actually make that illegal to use rage bait. If you're actually deliberately trying to bait people with rage to say on the platform, then that has a very negative effect on society.

Presenter39:56

So you're saying that those algorithms are choices and that we if we're programming the algorithm to prioritize content that will anger people and therefore more deeply engage them, draw them into the rabbit hole, we can just make a different choice and prioritize other things, prioritize positive content. Are there websites that do that?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee39:59

Bibl

Sir Tim Berners-Lee40:14

Well, if you compare Snapchat or TikTok and say Pinterest, for example, I haven't heard of people getting addicted to Pinterest.

Presenter40:18

For example.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee40:22

Go through quite a

Presenter40:23

I'll go through quite heavy use phases if I'm redecorating, to be completely honest. But I would say addiction would stop short of that. So that's a more positive algorithm.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee40:29

So that's a

Sir Tim Berners-Lee40:31

There are websites out there, there are s platforms which are useful. You might use it quite a lot, but you but they're not designed to be addictive. They don't bait you with rage. They bait you with things you're looking for.

Presenter40:39

Yeah.

Presenter40:43

Uh

Presenter40:44

You're currently involved in the SOLID project. Can you tell me about that? What do you hope to achieve?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee40:50

I hope to achieve that Apple programmes can work, save things in Google in G Drive and that Microsoft programs can save things in the iClouds. And so basically, I'm looking at all of these when you use programmers online or on your phone, it'll store, depending on which who wrote the program, it will store data in a different space.

Presenter41:13

So you've described these digital silos, Tim, is that right? So different companies they develop a technology and then they keep all that data in one place. So like if you've got an Instagram account, for example,

Sir Tim Berners-Lee41:13

You've described

Sir Tim Berners-Lee41:16

Bam.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee41:16

Yeah.

Presenter41:25

You can't have the same friend list in another app, LinkedIn or whatever. Those things aren't compatible. That's what you're talking about, is it?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee41:28

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee41:30

Right.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee41:33

Yes, digital silos. Silos is a good word for it. So the the solid protocol is about that. Solid protocol is about you having things like G Drive and a bit like iCloud, but where they're all interoperable, so any program can save data to it.

Presenter41:47

It sounds like that would very much put the user back in the driving seat. You know, you're talking about digital sovereignty there, aren't you, really? That we'd be in charge of our data and what can be done with it where it is.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee41:58

Absolutely, digital solvent is what we're talking about. It's a bit like the power when everybody could make their own website.

Presenter42:04

Uh

Sir Tim Berners-Lee42:04

Back in the day, then we we had digital sovereignty. Now we have to fight for it again.

Presenter42:09

All right, Satim Berners-Lee, time for your seventh choice today. Your penultimate piece of music. What are we going to hear?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee42:15

Yo Yo Bar, playing the cello. I was privileged enough to be able to hear at a small concert. He uh just picked up a pallo and cello and played some bach and it was wonderful.

Presenter42:28

Am I right in thinking there was a dinner that you were at with Yo Yo Ma? What was the occasion?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee42:32

It was a dinner of geeks. And in fact it was a geek dinner.

Presenter42:35

Sounds great. Who else was that?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee42:37

Uh then I can't reveal.

Presenter42:38

Okay. So the geek dinner, you and Yo-Yo Marsen was playing the cello.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee42:43

No, I was playing the cello, yeah.

Presenter43:43

Yo Yo Ma playing the prelude from Bach's cello suite number one in G major. Sit in Berners Lee, how optimistic are you about the future of the web today?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee43:53

Basically, I'm optimistic, because I can imagine the world in which it's Interrupt. We've built systems where the people where you have control of your own data and you have all your data in your data wallet, and then you run an AI on it. And so that the results that it gives you are very, very much better. This sort of combination of AI, the power of AI, but then with digital sovereignty that the AI works for you, I think is going to be really powerful and valuable for the world.

Presenter44:26

There are many people with different motivations taking part in that. How confident are you that will reach your vision at the end of it?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee44:34

Well, it's not clear. It depends on lots of things. I'm optimistic and hopeful, but there are many ways in which it could come off the track.

Presenter44:43

You once said that you wanted the web to serve humanity. Do you think that it still does that?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee44:48

I think net is serves humanity. We talked a lot about pieces which are addictive, but most of the web in general is mostly good.

Presenter44:57

And what legacy do you hope to leave, not just as the inventor of the web, but as somebody who's actively shaped its principles?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee45:04

But like any u web user to a certain extent, what we found with the Web Foundation is that you have to get pe every now and again you have to get people to fight for the web. So I've spent a lot of my life fighting for the web, but also people listening to this, there may be a point when they have to fight for the web that they want rather than the web that they're going to get otherwise.

Presenter45:27

And where should they take that fight? What how do you see that playing out? Is that a case of them as individuals creating the web that they want to exist? Or are you talking about lobbying politicians in government?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee45:40

All the above. Partly it's things you actually do yourself, for example, avoid those sites which are addictive. Use the ones that aren't. When you're giving phones to children, for example, then make sure that you give them a phones in a with parental control so that you can sh make sure that they don't use the things which are addictive and so on. But also every now and again you have to lobby governments and companies to do the right thing.

Presenter46:07

And are you up for doing that? Is that something that you are prepared to do in future?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee46:12

Yes, I'm afraid so. Uh I'm prepared to put to if I have to protest, then I I'll get out my posters and my my stick and and put them together and protest if I need to.

Presenter46:23

It's almost time, said Tim Bernersley. We're going to cast you away on your desert island soon. Now, obviously we know you can build things, I mean you can build computers, great with electronics. Do you think you could construct a shelter on the island?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee46:35

Do you get tools?

Presenter46:37

Yeah.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee46:37

Uh

Presenter46:37

No?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee46:38

So yeah, I I have a good look at constructing the shelter, so I

Presenter46:44

What sort of island are you hoping for?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee46:46

A warm one with a nice long beach to run along. So when I'm not building the shelter, I can enjoy the ocean.

Presenter46:54

And how will you be with the solitude? Do you enjoy being in your own company, alone with your thoughts?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee46:59

I can do that for a few days. A few days that'll be fine. Then I think I'd want somebody to come and pick yeah.

Presenter47:04

And how do you feel about being completely offline? I mean, you'll be disconnected from the whole of humanity.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee47:10

I think it'll probably be absolutely fine.

Presenter47:14

Well, we'll let you have one more disc before we cast you away, said Tim Berners-Lee. Your final choice today. What's it going to be?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee47:20

This is my default music. If you arrive in a new place and you get on the Wi-Fi and you find there's speakers and let's try them out. Or for getting wrapped up before going onstage or something. This is the Travelling Wilburs. End of the Light.

Speaker 447:36

Well it's all right.

Speaker 447:39

Riding around in the breeze, well in the song

Speaker 447:45

If you live the life you please, well it's all

Sir Tim Berners-Lee47:51

Yeah.

Speaker 447:51

Doing the best you can, well it's all right.

Speaker 447:56

As long as you lend your hand

Speaker 448:01

You can sit around and wait.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee48:02

For the phone of rain

Speaker 448:04

Uh

Presenter48:06

The Travelling Wilburys and End of the Line. So Tim Berners-Lee, it's the end of the line for you. I'm going to cast you away to the island. I will give you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other book of your choice to take with you. What's

Sir Tim Berners-Lee48:20

Yeah.

Presenter48:20

Is it gonna be?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee48:20

The Bible, can I choose a different religious book if I want to?

Presenter48:24

You can, yeah. Would you like to? I'll take the pop.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee48:24

Okay.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee48:26

Would you like to? I'll take the power. But that's why I wanted to make sure that I had the the right to choose.

Presenter48:31

Oh, absolutely. You can take one other book. What would you like?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee48:35

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander and Friends. It's a book about spaces, uh designing spaces, patterns for architecture, par patterns for designers of towns. So it's just a g a book full of all kinds of interesting thoughts about people and space.

Presenter48:52

And building, I mean, this is a bit of a classic, I think, of its genre. Is that an interest of yours, architecture and the built environment?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee48:56

Is that a

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:00

Yeah, actually, if I hadn't been in computer science, I would have loved to have been in architects, yes.

Presenter49:05

Well, maybe on the island you can start to experiment in that vein if you you know once you've done your shelter.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:08

Not vain if you

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:10

Perfect.

Presenter49:13

You can start ranging.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:13

You're gonna start arranging the outside special.

Presenter49:14

A new conurbation, exactly. You can also have a luxury item. What will that be, Tim?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:16

Yeah, they

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:19

So I've thought about yes, I wondered about the uh toolbox, but I think the I'll go for the moniker, a chromatica moniker.

Presenter49:27

A chromatic harmonica. Yep. Okay. And are you good at playing the harmonica?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:31

I'm okay. I'll be able to occupy myself.

Presenter49:34

And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first if you needed to?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:40

I think four strong winds in Syria.

Presenter49:43

And why would you go for that one first?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:44

It would remind me of all those families and friends on the lake.

Presenter49:49

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee49:53

Thank you for having me.

Presenter50:07

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Tim and I hope he's very happy on his island with his harmonica. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive for you to listen to. We've cast other computer scientists away to the island over the years, including Dame Wendy Hall and Sir Demis Hassabis. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Phil Lander, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylance, the content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Sarah Taylor.

Speaker 150:45

Hello, I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a psychologist and in my new podcast, Complex, I'll be your guide through all the information and misinformation that's out there about mental health. I'm joined by expert guests covering topics from people pleasing to perfectionism, burnout to empathy to find tangible advice so we can understand ourselves a little better. Complex with me, Kimberly Wilson. Listen on BBC Sounds.