Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, and the Web serves as a global system of linked documents and resources that are accessed via the Internet to share information, multimedia, and services. The Web was designed to make it easy to link and access information across computers worldwide, enabling browsers to fetch and render pages written in HTML using standard protocols and identifiers. Direct answers to your sub-questions:

• Who invented the World Wide Web?
  • Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He conceived the Web in 1989 at CERN, developing the core technologies of HTML, HTTP, and URLs, and later founded the World Wide Web Consortium to standardize and advance the Web.

• What purpose does it serve?
  • The Web provides a scalable, interoperable platform for publishing and retrieving hyperlinked information across the globe. It enables people to read, share, and interact with text, images, video, and applications through web pages and services.

• How has it impacted society today?
  • The Web has transformed communication, commerce, education, science, media, and daily life by enabling instant, globally accessible information and services. It has reshaped how work is done, how knowledge is created and disseminated, and how communities connect and collaborate.

Notes on sources

• The inventor and core purpose are well-documented in historical accounts and official Web standards bodies’ histories. If you’d like, I can pull up specific, up-to-date excerpts from authoritative sources to cite each point more precisely.