The world-wide-web is now twenty-five years old.
I was doing a quick search through previous posts and, to my horror, found that I had published a post when the ‘web’ was twenty-years old. It was a post called Even more Tim Berners-Lee and was published on the 25th March, 2010; some four-and-a-half years ago. Ouch!
Now Tim’s at it again speaking about the ‘web’ being twenty-five years old.
ooOOoo
From the web at 25 website:
Tim Berners-Lee calls for a Magna Carta for the Web (TED talk)
2014-8-19 // BY CORALIE MERCIER
2014 is the year the Web turns 25. Today, 19 August, marks the anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, releasing the code of the WWW to the public by making the files available on the net via FTP (refer to the History of the World Wide Web for more details).
Last March we launched this site, kicking off a year-long celebration of the Web’s 25th birthday, which will culminate in an Anniversary Symposium and gala dinner on 29 October in Santa Clara (USA), to focus on potential and challenges of the future Web.
Last March in Vancouver, Tim Berners-Lee gave a TED Talk: A Magna Carta for the web, that was just released by the TED conference. Enjoy!
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web 25 years ago. So it’s worth a listen when he warns us: There’s a battle ahead. Eroding net neutrality, filter bubbles and centralizing corporate control all threaten the web’s wide-open spaces. It’s up to users to fight for the right to access and openness. The question is, What kind of Internet do we want?
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
I will leave you with the conclusion of Tim’s talk (the emphasis is mine (Coralie’s) ):
What sort of web do you want? I want one which is not fragmented into lots of pieces, as some countries have been suggesting they should do in reaction to recent surveillance. I want a web which is, for example, a really good basis for democracy. I want a web where I can use healthcare with privacy and where there’s a lot of health data, clinical data is available to scientists to do research. I want a web where the other 60 percent get on board as fast as possible. I want a web which is such a powerful basis for innovation that when something nasty happens, some disaster strikes, that we can respond by building stuff to respond to it very quickly.
So this is just some of the things that I want, from a big list, obviously it’s longer. You have your list. I want us to use this 25th anniversary to think about what sort of a web we want. You can go to webat25.org and find some links. There are lots of sites where people have started to put together a Magna Carta, a bill of rights for the web. How about we do that? How about we decide, these are, in a way, becoming fundamental rights, the right to communicate with whom I want. What would be on your list for that Magna Carta? Let’s crowdsource a Magna Carta for the web. Let’s do that this year. Let’s use the energy from the 25th anniversary to crowdsource a Magna Carta to the web. (Applause)
Thank you. And do me a favor, will you? Fight for it for me. Okay? Thanks.
Get’s my vote. Just wish the last twenty-five years hadn’t gone by just so quickly 😦
Here Paul a link where you will find many of my takes on the challenge of us, citizens, keeping some type of ownership of the web and not end up being totally owned by it.
For the time being let us try to have Google, Facetime and Twitter share some of their advertising earnings with those, us, who are enduring receiveng advertising or beeing the subject of a search 🙂
http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2012/06/we-might-need-global-web-constitution.html
Thanks Per, I shall read that a little later on today.
Per, would love to republish that piece in this place?
I think the internet has become too controlled by a minority of corporates and government interests to now be considered with the same trust as it once had. I think it is inevitable that the internet will break up.
Interesting. Do you have a feeling for how that “breakup” will materialise?
One development is the attempt by nations to take control of name servers rather than corporates based in USA:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/04/russia_internet_sovereignty_vladimir_putin_is_tightening_his_grip_on_the.html