Berners-Lee, who was recently ranked the 11th most inspirational British entrepreneur, challenged members of the audience to get out of their comfort zones and out of their tightly-woven circle of online friends.

"I think we should think about stretch friends," he said. "You are friends with so many people in this town or this academy or this religion, but today I'd like to suggest someone to you who is very similar but they're in Iran or he's Catholic or she's a woman. I'm going to ask you to stretch and make a connection with somebody who is on the other side of a boundary because we need more of this."

Berners-Lee said we simply are too focused staying within some very large groups -- work associates, classmates, people in our own neighborhoods. We put too much emphasis on those enclosed groups, he added.

"We need to move some of that and stretch our friends and stretch ourselves," he added.

"Everybody makes one stretch friend a week and bit by bit, bit by bit in the pubs and bars they talk about their stretch friends and bit by bit we start to understand each other and less want to blow their houses up and invade their countries," Berners-Lee said.