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

Bad?

[dthrall]

"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 who is to decide good vs. bad? Parents should supervise/restrict their children's browsing habits, but I for one value sites such as http://www.erowid.org/ which is a site that contains information about drugs... There are plenty of "bad" websites out there that are labeled as "bad" because they offend people who are closed-minded...

What you mean "we"?

[hcg50a]

We have to work to make sure that that it supports the sort of society that we want to build on top of it.

"We" are doing that, certainly, but "we" don't all agree on what sort of society "we" want to build on top of it.

Amen!

[nantoka]

"..we have to work to make sure that that it supports the sort of society that we want to build on top of it..." amen to that! our problems as a race are not technological, they are existential, and I am really glad to see that the web is finally starting to reflect that. its as if the search-stream gods are finally comfortable with virtuality. finally it's okay just to put an idea on the web, and expect that if its good enough, that idea can stand on its own. from ideapark.org-- "we have been so busy building up the Internet with pseudo-edifices in the grand style of Olde Commerce--virtual banks, virtual universities, virtual shopping malls--that we have completely forgotten to ask ourselves whether that musty old economic model is really worth replicating in the Dream Land that is the Internet. It's time for us to wake up, and quit taking the math test over and over again."

He likes "blogs"

[GillBates0]

For years I had been trying to address the fact that the web for most people wasn't a creative space; there were other editors, but editing web pages became difficult and complicated for people. What happened with blogs and with wikis, these editable web spaces, was that they became much more simple. When you write a blog, you don't write complicated hypertext, you just write text, so I'm very, very happy to see that now it's gone in the direction of becoming more of a creative medium.

Interesting perspective there coming from the creator of the WWW itself. Especially so because of the contrary opinion that I and a number of techie people (on and off Slashdot) hold - about "blogs" merely being the ancient idea of personal webpages that have been around for 2 decades, and which is being recycled/marketed as a hep "in" idea in the past few years.

I've always thought of "blogs" being a overhyped concept that the PHBs (recall "corporate blogs") and Joe Sixpack are discovering as a kewl thing you can do with teh Intarweb.

And here comes Sir TBL himself and claims that blogs are closer to what he imagined the original WWW to be. And when he puts it like that, I sorta agree with him - I'd rather have people more personal content on there (not talking about the typical immature blog-kiddie's OMG I'm so cool) rather than have it turn into a marketing/services too used mostly for providing business services (car rentals, flight reservations).

If blogs are what make using the WWW easier, more interesting and useful, then I'm willing to drop the whole (Blog = Overhyped Personal Webpage) argument.

Re:What the fuck is this?

[mustafap]

>Who the hell is this "we" shit?

Thats the 'we' that actually build the infrastructure and design the protocols and applications, as apposed to the 'you', the lazy fucks who just blog all day and think it's relevant, important and meaning full.

Re:What Question would you have asked Sir TBL?

[maxwell demon]

Indeed, a very telling question is the following:

You must reflect though on the law of unintended consequences because it wasn't remotely ever your intention when you started on this that so much of the web would be given over to sexual exhibitionists masturbating in their bedrooms with webcams. Do you ever have bad moments about that?

Now imagine someone would ask Graham Bell:

You must reflect though on the law of unintended consequences because it wasn't remotely ever your intention when you started on this that so much of the phone system would be given over to sexual exhibitionists masturbating in their bedrooms with phone sex. Do you ever have bad moments about that?

Wouldn't that just sound silly to everyone?