Tim Berners-Lee was too busy to come to my wedding

According to my Facebook feed, this was the day in 1991 that Tim Berners-Lee was making the final tweaks to a new internet protocol — or perhaps fiddling with a server at CERN — in preparation for making the World Wide Web available to, well, the world.

Facebook may have it wrong but it’s too good a coincidence to pass up. For on this very same day back in 1991, at a registry office in north London, I was marrying Laura Kelly. She, in a stroke of luck, was marrying me. (The fact that Sir Tim was busy in CERN may explain why he was a no-show at the wedding.)

This is a round the houses way of saying that I’m celebrating my silver wedding anniversary today. That is a surprise. Not just to me but to many of the people who knew me when I got married and probably quite a few who got to know me in the intervening years.

They didn’t account for the perseverance, tolerance, and love that my my wife has shown.

The success of the web has probably been an even greater surprise. I remember its slow adoption in the company I worked for at the time and for a good few years later. And this was a global communications company.

But for much of the last twenty years or so the web has provided me with a living. Without my wife, however, that living would not have meant much. The life she has given me counts for so much more.

The web has changed the world. For the better, on balance. My marriage has changed me.

Thank you, Laura. Happy anniversary.