在MIT举行的一个座谈会上，伯纳斯·李将访问互联网比作是获取水。尽管获得水是一项更为重要的基本权利，因为没有水人类就活不下去。但访问互联网也应当被认为是一项权利，因为无法访问网络的人将会落在联网的人后面。他说，访问互联网是一项人权，没有网络人类也可能活下去。但在信息社会，能访问互联网和无法访问互联网的人之间的距离将会越拉越大。

他说，网络不应当成为一个传播谣言和阴谋论的载体，当初，他发明互联网的初衷之一是为了让科学家们更有效的分享他们的思想和信息，现在互联网规模变得越来越庞大，网络犹如我们的大脑，我们对它负有责任。

他曾参与过一个每个孩子一台笔记本的国际项目，这个项目的目标是给贫穷国家的儿童们提供几百万台廉价的电脑，是他们通过这些电脑能够获得知识和与世界沟通，这些穷国的孩子如果没有这个活动恐怕是没有机会接触电脑的。

Berners-Lee: Web access is a 'human right'

Speaks at MIT symposium marking the university's 150th anniversary

By Jon Brodkin, Network World 
April 12, 2011 04:58 PM ET

Two decades after creating the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee says humans have become so reliant on it that access to the Web should now be considered a basic right.

Retro browser smackdown: IE6 vs. Netscape in 2011

In a speech at an MIT symposium, Berners-Lee compared access to the Web with access to water. While access to water is a more fundamental right, because people simply cannot survive without it, Web access should be seen as a right, too, because anyone who lacks Web access will fall behind their more connected peers.

"Access to the Web is now a human right," he said. "It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger."

Berners-Lee appeared at the MIT symposium on "Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything," part of theschool's 150th anniversary celebration. Other notable speakers included Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child, who also created the MIT Media Lab. 

Berners-Lee has been outspoken on net neutrality, and at MIT warned against ISPs having too much control over how we use the Web. Berners-Lee also touched on smartphones, repeating his stance that it is better to develop Web apps that run on mobile devices than to create apps that circumvent the open Web.

He also said it's important for the Web not to simply become an instrument to spread unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories. One of his goals is to make the Web a system in which scientists can share data and information more effectively.

The Web has grown so large that the number of Web pages rivals the number of neurons in a human brain, Berners-Lee said. And the Web must be analyzed, just as we analyze the brain.

"To a certain extent, we have a duty about the Web which is greater than our duty about the brain, because with the brain we just analyze it," he said. "But with the Web, we actually get to engineer it. We can change it."

Negroponte used his time on stage to reflect on both the MIT Media Lab and the One Laptop Per Child project, which has supplied millions of cheap computers to children in some of the world's poorest countries. Negroponte's project could be seen as extending the idea that the Web is a basic human right with concrete action, putting laptops in the hands of children who otherwise would not get them.

Negroponte showed pictures of children around the world using the laptops, including one in Peru who was teaching his grandparents how to read and write. Each laptop, he noted, came loaded with 100 books. When 100 laptops were shipped to a village, that meant 10,000 books were coming with them.

The free market alone would not have been a great enough force to accomplish this, he said.