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Geneva, 1980s. Based at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee was suffering from a case of information overload at work. Desperately trying to co-ordinate a mass of research and data from incompatible computer systems around the globe, Berners-Lee figured there must be a better way to do things. So he set about creating a space where any piece of information could be linked to any other piece of information out in the world. To do this he joined two separate ideas that had been knocking about for some time - hypertext and the internet - and he created the World Wide Web. He gave his invention to us, the public, for free and, after a cautious start, we all leapt on board to create the huge collective brain that we now use daily. Imagine a world without the world wide web. You can't, can you?