World Wide Web Inventor Laments Lack of Tech Savvy Politicians

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web 25 years ago and has enjoyed the adulation and respect of the tech community ever since (it even got him into the Olympics). Speaking this weekend, Berners-Lee advocated for a more tech-savvy political class, suggesting that more members of parliament should learn how to code.

Here’s how Oscar Williams of The Guardian wrote it up;

“Speaking at the Every Second Counts Forum, the renowned computer scientist said: ‘Being able to code means that you understand what people can do with a computer. You need to be able to understand what people can do with a computer to make laws about it.

‘We need more people in parliament who can code, not because we need them to spend their time coding but because they have got to understand how powerful a weapon it is, so that they can make laws that require people to code to make machines behave in different ways.'”

Berners-Lee’s plea is an argument in favor of specialized literacy. You wouldn’t expect the French Academy to admit members who don’t speak French, or for a hospital’s board of directors to not include at least a few doctors. After all, how could those folks ably make decisions while lacking an integral prerequisite for the decision-making process? While not totally a 1:1 comparison, Berners-Lee is saying that the body of “experts” tasked with making decisions about the internet should actually include some, well, experts.

His gripe with the U.K. Parliament is no doubt echoed here in the United States.