To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web, its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee will speak in Qatar this afternoon about where technology will take us in the next quarter-century.

Berners-Lee, dubbed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 greatest minds of the 20th century, will give his talk today at 4:30pm at the Qatar National Convention Center.

Though registration for the event filled up last week, organizer Qatar Computing Research Institute said that the lecture can be watched live here.

In a statement, QCRI said:

“Sir Tim will discuss how he believes the World Wide Web can maximise its benefit to humanity by using its power to promote scientific collaboration to solve major problems, apply democratic and rational principles of governance, and build understanding and empathy across national and cultural borders.”

No restrictions

Notably, Berners-Lee has long supported the concept of net neutrality, or an “open internet” in which there are no restrictions from service providers or governments.

Speaking to Wired Magazine last month, he said:

“I believe that the future of the web is under threat from some governments that may abuse their powers, some businesses that may try to undermine the open market, and from criminal activity. In recent years we have seen a steady increase in censorship of the web by governments around the world.”

Also over the next two days, QCRI and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT-CSAIL) will hold its annual meeting.

The two groups have a joint research agreement, and will be discussing cyber security, speech and language processing and data integration, among other things.

Do you plan to tune in? Thoughts?