#ACMBookClub 2025
What’s on your reading list this fall? ACM invites you to be part of the Back-to-School Virtual Bookclub, #ACMBookClub! Running from November through December 2025, readers across the globe will embark on a journey of curiosity and innovation together. The community-picked title for our inaugural bookclub is This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web by ACM Turing Laureate Tim Berners-Lee.
Perhaps the most influential inventor of the modern world, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a different kind of technologist. Born in the same year as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, he famously distributed his invention, the World Wide Web, for no commercial reward. Its widespread adoption changed everything—transforming humanity into the first digital species. Through the web, we live, work, dream, quarrel, and connect.
In this intimate memoir, Berners-Lee tells the story of his iconic invention, exploring how it launched a new era of creativity and collaboration while unleashing powerful forces that imperil truth and privacy and polarize public debate. With his trademark humor and candor, he recounts how he arrived at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a young engineer, and soon came up with the astonishing idea of adding hyperlinks to the then-nascent Internet. His goal was to unleash a wave of creativity and collaboration for the benefit of all—a goal he’s pursued to this day.
The two-month experience will culminate in an exclusion online discussion led by Marlene Mhangami, Chair of the ACM practitioner board and Senior Developer Advocate specializing in Python and AI at Microsoft.
Reading Schedule
Week 1 (Nov. 9-15)
- Prologue
- Chapter 1: Early Days
- Chapter 2: CERN
- Chapter 3: Ignition
Week 2 (Nov. 16-22)
- Chapter 4: The Rise of the Web
- Chapter 5: Governing the Web
- Chapter 6: The Wave
Week 3 (Nov. 23-29)
- Chapter 7: Growing Pains
- Chapter 8: Technology and Society
- Chapter 9: The Mobile Web
Week 4 (Nov. 30-Dec. 6)
- Chapter 10: This is for Everyone
- Chapter 11: Open Data
- Chapter 12: Machine Learning
Week 5 (Dec. 7-13)
- Chapter 13: Design Issues
- Chapter 14: The Contract for the Web
- Chapter 15: Inrupt
Week 6 (Dec. 14-20)
- Chapter 16: Intelligent Machines
- Chapter 17: Attention vs. Intention
- Chapter 18: Signs of Spring
Final Discussion
When: December 28, 2025
Where: Zoom
Time: 10 AM Eastern Time
Marlene Mhangami is a Senior Developer Advocate specializing in Python and AI at Microsoft, a computer scientist, keynote speaker and explorer. She is the current chair of the ACM practitioner board, was the previous vice chair of the Python Software Foundation and lef the first PyCon Africa.
