Tim Berners-Lee on Blogging And The Web

neiljt writes "The BBC2 is to air an interview by Marc Lawson with Tim Berners-Lee this evening, where TBL offers his thoughts on the Read/Write web. A transcript of the interview is available from BBC News." From the article: "I feel that we need to individually work on putting good things on [the web], finding ways to protect ourselves from accidentally finding the bad stuff, and that at the end of the day, a lot of the problems of bad information out there, things that you don't like, are problems with humanity. This is humanity which is communicating over the web, just as it's communicating over so many other different media. I think it's a more complicated question we have to; first of all, make it a universal medium, and secondly we have to work to make sure that that it supports the sort of society that we want to build on top of it. "

Comments

Re:Parent is NOT flamebait!

[Seumas]

I think a big part of the problem is that people are constantly told that their viewpoint matters. What they have to say MUST be said and that everyone is obligated to hear it. So you wind up with tens of millions of teenagers and young adults with nothing insightful to contribute, contributing anyway.

Seriously, what reason is there to create a blog or a website unless you have some seriously valuable content? Just because you have an opinion or a thought doesn't mean you need a site to claim it on. People use their blogs and sites like a portal to their "intellect". A way to fluff their ego and draw friends (which is pathetic since they're just other people online spread around the world that shouldn't matter to you). But they're all just dying for kudos to be posted to their blog posts by the throngs of masses that care so much about the conditions of a breakup or divorce or hard day at college.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is just shut up. Or, in this case, not have a blog or a website. Just like some people choose not to pollute the world with more crappy children by not having any, others should choose not to pollute the internet by not running a stupid blog. I made the choice not to bother running any website that has anything to do with my viewpoints or thoughts on the world. Those are mine and while I'll share them personally in face to face situations as appropriate to discussions, I'm not going to throw them out as some "valuable" point of reference on the internet. Doing so is just the hight in deluded self-importance.

Really, 99.9999% of blogs and personal websites seem like the equivalent of the guy or girl hanging out in a group who can just never shut up, always have to be the center of attention and feel that every thought that enters their brain has to be expressed and discussed and acknowledged by their friends. It's just sad and pathetic and polluted.

And it isn't that people shouldn't be able to share their thoughts or ideas. But that's what Slashdot and Usenet and other outlets are for. If you have thoughts on tech news, discuss them on Slashdot. If you have thoughts on politics, share them on a political site. Just please stop fucking creating a new blog or site for every person with every view in the world. That defeats the entire purpose of the internet. Rather than bringing people together to discuss things, it turns into one big sloshy pit where there are billions of completely separated and often unheard voices. It makes every person and their thoughts an island and nobody is going to go out surfing from island to island to island when they could just participate in the bigger conversation with more mindful groups on the mainland.

bad web sites? like...

[KillShill]

like web sites that suggest that the administrations of america, britan, australia, spain and italy tricked their citizens into invading a country based on forged evidence for reasons that have little to do with oil or terrorism (oil has gone way up in price...)

those naughty naughty web sites err "blogs". i'm just relieved that the mainstream media keeps relentlessly attacking the validity and credibility of blogs and the internet. if it weren't for the mainstream media's absolute backing of the administration, imagine the horrors we would be subject to?

stuff like schools not having to have 75 students per teacher, roads being kept up, hospitals well-funded, millions of new jobs being created. damn, i'm so glad the media holds onto the administration's word without question. i cannot imagine the consequences and lobbyists pay our congress enough to do the worrying for us.

keep us safe please. those damn ay-rabs are gonna get us. never mind that the hijackers passports survived and the world trade centers didn't or that the air force didn't respond until half an hour after the planes that hit the towers, when normally they respond within seconds. or that the esteemable "president" and his secret service knew that he was safe in the school reading about goats, which was announced days earlier to the public, deemed that they shouldn't evacuate lest a plane should hit.

i just love the smell of a reichstag fire in the morning.

http://www.google.com/search?q=reichstag

http://www.weyrich.com/political_issues/reichstag_ fire.html