Stephen Fry will narrate the audiobook edition of Tim Berners-Lee’s This is For Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web, Macmillan Audio announced in a news release.
Berners-Lee’s book, scheduled for release by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux next month, is his account of inventing the World Wide Web and an assessment of its state today. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “A tech pioneer recalls creating the web—and asks users to help safeguard its future.” It’s Berners-Lee’s second book on the subject, following Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web, published in 1999.
“As the rapid development of artificial intelligence brings new risks and possibilities, Berners-Lee also offers a crucial guide to the decisions ahead—and shows how our digital lives can be reengineered for the sake of human flourishing rather than profit or for power,” Macmillan says of the book.
Fry, the British comedian and actor known for his roles in films including Wilde and Gosford Park, has narrated scores of audiobooks throughout his career, perhaps most notably J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. He said in a statement, “The glad task of reading This Is for Everyone ranks very highly on my list of favorite jobs ever.…This book is a truly fascinating journey from the early days of the hobbyist internet, through the explosion of the web around the globe and into the time of social media and AI, in the company of a wise, sane and brilliant individual who has somehow—despite the threats, corruptions and anxieties we now face—retained his idealism and optimism.”
All editions of This Is for Everyone are scheduled for publication on September 9.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
