Today, 12 March 2016, is the Web’s 27th birthday.

On this day in 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to CERN, outlining how he believed “we should work toward a universal linked information system.”

Fast forward 27 years, and today, almost half of the world’s people are using the Web to create, communicate and collaborate. As Sir Tim said in 2014, “[The Web] is the largest repository for information and knowledge the world has yet seen, and our most powerful communications tool. The web is now a public resource on which people, businesses, communities and governments depend. It is vital to democracy and now more critical to free expression than any other medium.”

Yet the future of the Web is far from certain. More than half of us have never used the Web, usually because high prices keep people from doing so. Many governments and companies are trying to control the Web, by spying, censoring, throttling or blocking traffic. Women are often excluded online. And not enough people are using the Web to its full potential, for example by accessing open data about government spending, and looking for signs of corruption and waste.

Remember, the Web doesn’t belong to a single government, company or individual. It belongs to all of us, and each one of us is responsible for protecting and enhancing it. Please support us by learning more about our work, spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter, signing up for our email newsletter, or making a donation.