The inventor of the World Wide Web urged Boston tech leaders at a gathering Thursday night to take the fight for net neutrality to Washington, D.C.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee was speaking at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's annual Awards Gala, where he received its top honor, the Commonwealth Award.
In a seven-minute speech after accepting the award, Berners-Lee mentioned that he has a meeting coming up in Washington to lobby in favor of keeping the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules that require broadband providers to maintain equal access to internet content for all consumers. The FCC is planning to vote on weakening its net neutrality rules later this year — a direction that is being pushed by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai.
"We need to be critical and constructive about the things we build on top of the web now."
"You maybe should get yourself meetings in Washington with people to make sure that they understand that, whatever side of the political spectrum you are on, keeping the web open, keeping the [...] market for connectivity separate from the market for content is really, really important," Berners-Lee said.
Some Boston tech leaders have previously called for the FCC to keep its current net neutrality rules in place, in part because it would disadvantage entrepreneurs creating new technologies on the web and businesses that rely on cloud services.
Berners-Lee, the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, also told Boston tech leaders to think critically about how their technologies impact humanity and "take responsibility, to a certain extent, for the result that they have on the world."
"We need to be critical and constructive about the things we build on top of the web now," said Berners-Lee, who is also a professor at MIT.
The winners of the MassTLC Awards this year included Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah, Salesforce CTO Wayne Whitcomb and HubSpot Chief People Office Katie Burke. MassTLC also gave its Distinguished Leadership Awards to the MIT App Inventor team and its Mosaic Award to Black Tech Boston and Tech Connection founder Melissa James for her commitment to diversity and inclusion. You can find a full list of the winners here.
