He also wrote that net neutrality is key to the Web's future. "Debate has risen again in the past year about whether government legislation is needed to protect net neutrality. It is," he wrote.

He sounded baffled by a suggestion from Google and Verizon earlier this year that net neutrality should not apply to mobile phones. "It is also bizarre to imagine that my fundamental right to access the information source of my choice should apply when I am on my WiFi-connected computer at home, but not when I use my cell phone," he wrote.

If the basic principles of the Web are upheld--including support for open standards, making data openly shareable, and net neutrality--the Web promises some "fantastic future capabilities," he said.

Linked data is one example of future promise. Tagging individual pieces of data, within a document for example, would allow applications to read and manipulate more information. That could help scientists, for example, more easily collect all data on a certain subject.

"The goal of the Web is to serve humanity," he wrote. "We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine."