On January 13, 2016, the father of the world wide web Tim Berners-Lee was in Rome. He had come to present the TIM commercial that saw him as the protagonist while in a wood he watched the flight of birds and talked about the meaning of the network: an elegant, inspirational thing, desired by the then head of TIM communication Carlotta Ventura for the launch of the new logo.
Rep40 – Berners-Lee: “In 10 years more digital, but we still need good journalism”
For the occasion, the following day a seminar was scheduled with the Minister of Public Administration Marianna Madia and one hundred protagonists of the Italian digital agenda and in the evening a crowd bath at the Auditorium for the 40th anniversary of the Republic. For a series of fortunate circumstances I spent twenty-four hours with him: I interviewed him on his arrival for the Republic, I moderated the seminar with the minister and in the evening I was with him on the stage of the Auditorium.
Looking back at the notes, photos and videos of that two days, some things remain with me: meanwhile, the sense of a man still on a mission, the mission of ensuring that his invention is used for the common good; then the sincere curiosity about Italy, “is it true that you are reassembling?”, he asked me when he met me, “it is a waste that a country like this is behind on digital”; and finally what he told the audience of the Auditorium at the end of his tour. He said that compared to the first time I had invited him to Rome, five years earlier, he had found an impressive change of mentality, a greater focus on innovation, a desire to move forward. And in fact it is in those months that the foundations of the digital leap that we are experiencing now were laid (Spid, the IO app, the FOIA, the digital registry).
He also said that in our future there would be more and more people online and that for this there would be an increasing need for good journalism. He got a big round of applause when he went out, with the backpack over his shoulder and, under the blue dress, the red runner shoes as if he had to run at any moment.
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