• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 9, 2013

Search engines like Google and Microsoft have been working toward creating open and collaborative tools -- but the ideas have not materialized close to Tim Berners-Lee's original vision for the World Wide Web.

The original Web browser was based on the ability to read and write, so when browsing through the pages of a newspaper, one person could introduce an idea and another could add to the information. Having the ability to share thoughts and content in blogs, wikis or cloud-based collaborative platforms provides a good foundation, but the world needs more collaborative tools, said Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet.

"The reason the Internet sucks today is because we haven't fixed it yet," he said. "We messed up."

Berners-Lee spent much of the time Saturday speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference about the transition from https to JavaScript to HTML, along with the Open Web Platform and the value of HTML5, encouraging people to develop mobile Web apps rather than native apps.

"The Web's function hasn’t fully materialized yet," he said, explaining that the "crazy process" in one's head would come together with others to solve the problem.

Rather than tell kids they need to learn Microsoft Word, he recommends explaining they can create anything with a computer. Berners-Lee also implied a direct connection between the NeXT machine, referring to the underlying BSD Unix core used to create the World Wide Web, and Apple's iPhone.