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As We Forge the Web of Tomorrow, We Need a Set of Guiding Principles That Can Define the Kind of Web We Want, Says Tim Berners-Lee (nytimes.com)
Tim Berners-Lee, writing for The New York Times: All technologies come with risks. We drive cars despite the possibility of serious accidents. We take prescription drugs despite the danger of abuse and addiction. We build safeguards into new innovations so we can manage the risks while benefiting from the opportunities. The web is a global platform -- its challenges stretch across borders and cultures. Just as the web was built by millions of people collaborating around the world, its future relies on our collective ability to make it a better tool for everyone.
As we forge the web of tomorrow, we need a set of guiding principles that can define the kind of web we want. Identifying these will not be easy -- any agreement that covers a diverse group of countries, cultures and interests will never be. But I believe it's possible to develop a set of basic ideals that we can all agree on, and that will make the web work better for everyone, including the 50 percent of the world's population that has yet to come online.
Governments, companies and individuals all have unique roles to play. The World Wide Web Foundation, an organization I founded in 2009 to protect the web as a public good, has drawn up a set of core principles outlining the responsibilities that each party has to protect a web that serves all of humanity. We're asking everyone to sign on to these principles and join us as we create a formal Contract for the Web in 2019. The principles specify that governments are responsible for connecting their citizens to an open web that respects their rights.
As we forge the web of tomorrow, we need a set of guiding principles that can define the kind of web we want. Identifying these will not be easy -- any agreement that covers a diverse group of countries, cultures and interests will never be. But I believe it's possible to develop a set of basic ideals that we can all agree on, and that will make the web work better for everyone, including the 50 percent of the world's population that has yet to come online.
Governments, companies and individuals all have unique roles to play. The World Wide Web Foundation, an organization I founded in 2009 to protect the web as a public good, has drawn up a set of core principles outlining the responsibilities that each party has to protect a web that serves all of humanity. We're asking everyone to sign on to these principles and join us as we create a formal Contract for the Web in 2019. The principles specify that governments are responsible for connecting their citizens to an open web that respects their rights.
Just make sure that it's open and accessible for anyone who wants to have a presence even if there are others in opposition to that presence. You're not going to be able to please everyone and there are plenty of governments, industries, or other groups that are only interested in control and appeasing them in any way will ensure that you've only really created a tool with which they can abuse or enslave humanity.
And anyone who says otherwise is simply not paying attention. Wrong think? Not on the "Web We Want"! What defines "Wrong Think?" Well don't worry. We'll tell you when you think wrongly.
Many of us envision a web as a place to share ideas, to discuss them, to tear them down, to dissect them, so the best ideas can come forward. You can no longer do that. It's not even the "KKK Neo Nazi Fascist Scum" that is being deplatformed, banned. It's the average user because they said some mean words, or the comedian who said something offensive 10 years ago, as comedians often do. When you start banning the extreme, but legally protected speech, everyone is next and we're at that point.
And while everyone is increasingly starting to have these "WTF" moments, at the same time they keep asking for more of it. After all, it's the "Web We Want".
What was once just a tool for communication has become a weapon, and citizens, governments, militaries, and criminals are all fighting for control of it.
Average people just want their email, watch movies, shopping, maybe a little research, and so on.
Governments want to control what flows over it, and the more authoritarian and dictatorial they are, the tighter they want to squeeze.
Governments also stupidly use it to connect all their important infrastructure control, which just makes it so much easier for terrorists and criminals to attack the things that the average person relies on for their day-to-day survival.
Financial institutions also stupidly connect themselves together with it -- which wouldn't be a problem, except they're so gods-be-damned stupid about it, that it seems a 12 year old child can break in and cause all sorts of havoc and mayhem.
Militaries use it as a weapon to attack other militaries and governments.
Criminals use it like a crowbar to break into companies to steal data, steal money, hold data hostage, and so on.
Terrorists use it to influence weak-minded people into becoming murdering monsters, and as a way to coordinate their attacks on soft targets (i.e. civilians).
Perhaps we don't deserve an Internet. Perhaps, like so many other technologies that started out bright and wonderful ideas, it's all Too Much Too Fast, evolving orders of magnitude faster than our poor Caveman selves have evolved our society and civilization, and We Can't Handle It -- therefore it gets twisted and abused and perverted, as we all see it's become.
At the rate things are going, we may not have an Internet at some point. It may all just fragment and collapse under the weight of all the corruption and misuse of the technology. ISPs may just divvy it up into the 'walled gardens' everyone is so afraid of, and even the highest, most expensive tiers of access will still have limits, controls, corporate censorship, and barriers against accessing anyone else's 'walled garden', that make it essentially useless. Governments, for all we know, may adopt Chinas' 'Great Firewall' model, picking and choosing what their citizens may and may not access, and watching every single byte sent like a hawk. Law enforcement, in their over-anxious drive to see and hear everything all the time without any barriers, may destroy all encryption for everyone, creating a utopia for criminals, who will be completely unfettered in committing cybercrime.
A 'free and open Internet'? Seems more and more unlikely, at least not the way it's being done now. There may need to be an 'Internet 2.0' (or 3.0, or 4.0, or whatever) that has nothing whatsoever to do with the current Internet infrastructure -- or they may try that, and have it quashed and made illegal by governments and corporations' lobbyists. Some talk of a 'mesh Internet', completely wireless. Some talk of expanding the 'dark web', and similar ideas -- but if all the above are made illegal, federal crimes, then are we all expected to become criminals? Do we go back to SneakerNet, and exchange ideas and data and entertainment via portable drives, delivered by hand from person to person?
Do we, as regular people, have enough of a voice to change these dystopian futures of the Internet? Are there enough of us, can we speak loudly and clearly enough, to make a difference? Are there too many average citizens who are complacent, or worse, apathetic, and those of us who would speak up would just be dismissed as fringe elements (or worse, as dissidents)?
What's the mechanism by which the Internet can be saved from possible dystopian futures? Is it technlogical? Or is it socio-political? Both? The answer is important.
I don't have answers. There's too many questions, and too many people involved. Who, really, is wise enough to have the right answers? Is this a problem for The Few, or for All?