Mr. Brewster Kahle

He was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. The emphasis of his studies was artificial intelligence; he studied under Marvin Minsky and W. Daniel Hillis. He also studied Library Science at Simmons College. He was a member of the Thinking Machines team (1983-1992), where he developed the WAIS system, a precursor to the World Wide Web. In 1992, he started, with Bruce Gilliat, WAIS, Inc. (sold to AOL in 1995), and, in 1996, Alexa Internet (sold to Amazon.com in 1999). At the same time as Alexa, he founded the Internet Archive, which he continues to direct. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a key supporter of the Open Content Alliance. In 2005, Kahle was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Kahle and his wife, Mary Austin, created the Kahle/Austin Foundation, a US$45 million trust that supports the Internet Archive and other non-profit organizations. In his TED Talks on building free digital library, Kahle describes his vision of a free digital library, which contains books, free music concerts, TV programs, a "snapshot" of World Wide Web, etc.