Stuart Appleby interviews actor, comedian, broadcaster, journalist and author Stephen Fry at the World Wide Web Foundation Web Index launch on Wednesday 5th September 2012 at The Deck, National Theatre, London.

The Web Index launch, which was hosted by the World Wide Web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web’s impact on people and nations. It ranks nations from around the world by the state of the Web in their country.

Fry, who is one of the UK’s leading Tweeters and supporters of internet freedom, described the Web Index as “immensely important” to the future of the internet.

The 55-year-old said: “I think (the World Wide Web Index) is immensely important. Most people would have heard of the idea of analytics which is the knowledge companies and services have about you as a result of various exchanges on the Web. These are totted and counted up and the numbers of people that visit your website can be broken down into areas of geography and so on – it can literally analyse the traffic of the whole Web and this is known as analytics.

“What the Web Index is and from the moment Sir Tim Berners-Lee evented the World Wide Web, which really is extraordinary, he saw it as a force for openness in science, openness in politics, openness across continents and the way information can be exchanged for the better.”

To find out more about the World Wide Web Foundation Web Index Launch, please click here.

With thanks to Portland Communications for their assistance in arranging this interview.

The full audio interview with Stephen Fry can be listened to here.