This is the story of a truly worthwhile endeavor.   It’s the story of how we changed the way we used the Internet and improved the lives of millions of people.   It’s still being written.

Tim Berners-Lee,  the inventor of the World Wide Web, says the social impact of the Internet is still very much in its infancy, evidenced by the fact that only 20% of people on the planet use it.   On Sunday, September 14th, Berners-Lee unveiled the World Wide Web Foundation with a seed grant of $5 million dollars from Knight Foundation.

The mission of Web foundation:

• To create one Web that is free and open and
• To extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet.

The vision: “The Web as humanity connected by technology.”  But here is where it really gets interesting.   This is not all just pie-in-the-sky daydreaming.

Basically Berners-Lee says there’s a lot about the Internet we don’t understand, but we know it has the potential to do certain very good things that we’re not currently doing with it.   As vague as that statement may seem it’s actually an example of clarity, which brings to light the type of Internet envisioned by Muhammed Yunus: the one which helps a woman in Bangladesh sell baskets she hand weaves.

Please imagine this scenario:

You’re in a third-world country and the only thing that stands between you and how to properly care for a sick loved one is a phone number or a piece of information you need.

What if you have no car?  What if there is no doctor down the street?  When you consider the life of someone you love, it’s easier to see the web’s potential to break down barriers to life-critical services (i.e. how to farm, how to reduce a fever, how to purify water, treat an infection, or build a house for you and your family to sleep in.)

But the mission of Web Foundation is much larger than just providing for basic human needs.   It’s also about empowerment.   To some, bringing the Internet to third-world countries to help the poor sounds absurd but so did the idea of donating cell phones to third-world countries just 10 years ago.   Why would I want a cell phone when I can’t afford medicine for my child?  The ostensible evidence is that cell phones enable communication, which in turn empowers individuals to make all sorts of changes in their lives.

The World Wide Web is leaps and bounds more powerful than a telephone at retrieving information and communicating with others, and based on this theory, once Internet access is brought to the masses (the missing 80% of the world’s population) we will see leaps and bounds improvements at almost quanta rate.   And hopefully this will be that moment where the hope gaps begin to close, as lives are improved, and people realize they’re not so alone.

So this is the first chapter, my best effort to be brief but still capture so much of what I see in the work of Berners-Lee and Knight Foundation as truly divine revelation to bring hope to those crying out in need.   To most people in the west the Internet is not a matter of life or death, but more a matter of convenience.   But to some people, who would not use it for the same purposes we do, it is exactly this.   And to those people who would not use it, the price of that healing is information.   In this case, we’re not talking about pennies a day to feed a child in Africa but rather giving an entire populous the means to save their own lives and treat themselves.   And to this, I say truly the best things in life are free.

You can takepart by visiting webfoundation.org to learn more and get involved.