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Tim Berners-Lee Says World Wide Web Must Emerge From 'Adolescence' (venturebeat.com)

The fraying World Wide Web needs to rediscover its strengths and grow into maturity, its designer Tim Berners-Lee said on Monday, marking the 30th anniversary of the collaborative software project his supervisor initially dubbed "vague but exciting." From a report: Speaking to reporters at CERN, the physics research center outside Geneva where he invented the web, Berners-Lee said users of the web had found it "not so pretty" recently. "They are all stepping back, suddenly horrified after the Trump and Brexit elections, realizing that this web thing that they thought was that cool is actually not necessarily serving humanity very well," he said. "It seems we don't finish reeling from one privacy disaster before moving onto the next one," he added, citing concerns about whether social networks were supporting democracy. People who had grown up taking the internet's neutrality for granted now found that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had "rolled that back."

25 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Humanity by Luthair · · Score: 4, Insightful

    needs to do it first....

    1. Re:Humanity by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is the side effect of Free and Open information.
      Before the Web, While legally had the freedom of speech, being able to publish your viewpoints was expensive, and/or tightly controlled.

      A lot of our opinions (including my own, so take what I say with a grain of salt) are just based of our experiences and what we grew up with with learning on what is right and wrong. So me as someone who grew up programming computers, tend to see other problems like a programming problem. Setup a user experience to direct people to make the right choices, put in faults if they go too far off the stray, try to accommodate for variances, and normalize them.

      In the past our freedom of speech was mostly limited to our personal communication with other people, Family, Friends, CoWorkers, and guys at the Bar. Many of the founding ideas of American Democracy was discussed and plan at the taverns per-Revolutionary War. Talking to these small groups had smaller amount of impact. However now I can post my idea and be read all around the world, for people to either change their mind or at least consider my idea, just outwardly reject it and argue my points or failures, or complement me if it matches what they are think too.

      The problem is every opinion is not edited and we have no good way to fact check all our opinions. I could have the Opinion of an Anti-Vaxer (I don't) then spread my opinion to the general discussion. While 30 years ago, such information I may have written to the editor, and they would have not posted mostly because it doesn't fit the facts, or at worse, doesn't jive with his view. Or I could spend thousands of dollars to public my ideas myself.

      Today it is like everyone has their own newspaper, that they can publish for free, with the content of a bar room half drunk discussion.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Humanity by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is the side effect of Free and Open information.
      Before the Web, While legally had the freedom of speech, being able to publish your viewpoints was expensive, and/or tightly controlled.

      Don't worry, the big social media sites are fixing that. Tightly controlled is the new normal.

      Facebooks latest bans? Senator Warren's ads calling for the breakup of Facebook (yeah, no one's going to believe that one was "community standards"), and the deplatforming of ZeroHedge, a crazy/fringe investment site that is routinely vocally critical of Facebook.

      The problem is every opinion is not edited and we have no good way to fact check all our opinions. I could have the Opinion of an Anti-Vaxer (I don't) then spread my opinion to the general discussion. While 30 years ago, such information I may have written to the editor, and they would have not posted mostly because it doesn't fit the facts, or at worse, doesn't jive with his view. Or I could spend thousands of dollars to public my ideas myself.

      The new normal is that you can't spend money to buy an ad if the publisher disagrees with your views.

      Today it is like everyone has their own newspaper, that they can publish for free, with the content of a bar room half drunk discussion.

      Sadly, that's not the case on social media. However, the web as a whole is still remarkably open if you want to make your own web site, and of course gopher and usenet still exist, largely under the radar now.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  2. What a joke. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    The results of elections didn't go the way the permanent state/globalists/monied elite wanted, so there fore we have to STOP EVERYTHING. IT"S THE WORST DISASTER EVER.

    Listen, these elections are what you get instead of violent revolution. Keep chipping away at the values of the enlightenment and you won't like the result.

  3. Oh, I thought he could be above this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there's something particularly chilling, technologists thinking their task is to "solve" politics is pretty high on the list. (Among politicians and politically motivated public commentators the parallel approach is to claim their political stance is pure scientific truth without a whiff of political stance.) My personal take on such approaches is that the cure may be more dangerous than the problem that has been framed to be the problem.

    Politics is politics. There are no solutions that turn it into something else. Or at least solutions that would really fix it, but there are plenty of "solutions" which break things that actually work as a side effect, while mostly replacing the problem with another, trendier problem...

    1. Re:Oh, I thought he could be above this... by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wrongthink.

      The guy says the Internet is contaminated. You know it is. It's not just propaganda. That's just ONE of the pollutants.

      Data grabbing and advertising are in there as well.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  4. The US and UK by AHuxley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    voted for the politics they wanted and for the UK to exit the EU.
    Humanity enjoys the freedom to vote.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:The US and UK by thereddaikon · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I'm still baffled by how many supposedly smart people can be so easily manipulated into thinking its the end of the world. I shouldn't be surprised I suppose, when Bush was re-elected some major UK newspaper had a on its cover the question how 300 million people could be wrong. Europeans and wannabe Europeans have always felt some kind of weird superiority over us. Jokes on them, Obama was the same shit. Continued the same wars and economic policies for the most part and the major social changes attributed to his presidency were all done by the courts.

      Trump's presidency has been pretty mundane truth be told. Nothing is on fire. We have less war for a change. My 401k is looking good. The price of gas is too. Oh yeah and nobody is in concentration camps like so many claimed. Yet clearly the guy is somehow at the same time both Hitler and incapable of walking and chewing bubble gum at the same time.

      I'll tell you what he actually is, a centrist who has a focus on economic policy. 99% of the whining and bitching about him is manipulation by the other party because they are mad they lost.

    2. Re:The US and UK by thereddaikon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Oh get over yourself. It's possible to have different opinions. Not everyone is a Russian agent and while it may be a shock to your snowflake sensibilities there are legitimate reasons for wanting to leave the EU.

    3. Re:The US and UK by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Democracy isn't a vote, it's a process. The original vote didn't even define what brexit is, it just said "leave the EU". Years later and the democratic process has been unable to translate that into a plan that can be agreed on.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:The US and UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh yeah and nobody is in concentration camps like so many claimed.

      Don't worry, they've changed the definition of "concentration camp" to include "people who have committed crimes and are in jail."

      I'm not even joking, I've heard people call ICE detention facilities where people are held until they can be deported "concentration camps" which is just so crazy I can't even put words to it. You'd think that would count as some form of Holocaust denial but given liberals love to attack Israel, apparently not.

      Yet clearly the guy is somehow at the same time both Hitler and incapable of walking and chewing bubble gum at the same time.

      You see that a lot with conspiracy theorists. The enemy must simultaneously be incredibly strong, and capable of pulling off vast conspiracies, while at the same time being dumb enough that their conspiracy is easily spotted, if only you're willing to look at it right. Since the left has gone all-in on the whole Russian conspiracy angle (just scroll up in this very thread!) it's not surprising we're seeing this common trope applied to President Trump as well.

    5. Re:The US and UK by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the guy is somehow at the same time both Hitler and incapable of walking and chewing bubble gum at the same time.

      That more-or-less describes Hitler: charismatic, but basically a failure at everything else.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:The US and UK by totallyarb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The UK didn't vote for Brexit

      Factually untrue. There was a referendum, and more people voted to leave than remain.

      the majority didn't vote

      Also factually untrue. Turnout was 72.2% - which is higher than turnout at any US Presidential election since 1900. Are those all invalid too?

      Putin's illegal propaganda funding

      ...is a convenient excuse for people who want to ignore the result. How little do you think of the people of Britain that you think that the activities of a few trolls on the internet are enough to decisively swing the result?

      stop Brexit with a real vote

      What do you define as a REAL vote? Do you seriously think that a second referendum would magically be "cleaner" than the first one? I don't think you do. I think you just want to keep asking the question until you get the answer you want, and democracy be damned.

      For what it's worth, I voted Remain. I think leaving the EU is a terrible decision. But the precedent that would be set by ignoring the expressed will of the public because you don't like the result is more frightening to me than the worst chaos Brexit might bring.

      --
      -- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
    7. Re:The US and UK by meta-monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Same thing with "dog whistles." I'm a right winger. Trump says something like "Make America Great Again" and leftists say "dog whistle for white supremacy!" but I can't hear it, and I'm the dog. Maybe that means it's not a dog whistle, and the leftists are just hearing whatever they want to hear.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  5. Power brokers by Shotgun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Power brokers and the "learned scholars" seem to always think the system is broken when normal people get more information and then don't bend to their will. Maybe the solution you envision from your ivory tower surrounded by your walled gardens isn't the world we want to live in.

    --
    Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
    Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    1. Re:Power brokers by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do you not consider people not vaccinating their children to breakage?

      In a perfect world everyone would have the time and ability to carefully research an issue like vaccination and come to understand that there are vast amounts of evidence supporting the conclusion that they are safe and effective, with a few small caveats that any competent doctor administering them would be well aware of.

      In practice that's a completely unrealistic scenario and failure to address the issue results in human rights violations.

      Worse still, the "power brokers" you mention use fear and doubt to exert control, and any democracy should rightly try to prevent that from happening. Democracy based on fear and lies is not democracy, it's what happened in Europe in the 1930s.

      There has to be a balance, otherwise it's just exchanging one type of tyranny for another.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Power brokers by doconnor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Ivory Tower may be far from perfect, but truth and reality is, at least superficially, the overriding concern. It usually win out, often in battles fought long ago.

      What a lot of people get on the web are falsehoods crafted (or created by meme evolution) to appeal to human irrationality.

  6. Disconnected by macraig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Berners-Lee is so fully disconnected from reality now that he's no longer credible. He talks about the Web "saving humanity", yet he has personally participated in crafting standards for it that serve corporate interests rather than the rest of us. Under his "guidance", the Web has transitioned from a network where people participated in its development and had control over how they consumed it to one where they no longer participate, have no control, and have become passive consumers. Corporate Web developers now view their target "useless eater" audiences with the same disregard as eugenicists of the last century.

    He's lamenting his own utter failure to guide his own creation in the way that he claims he really wanted it to progress, while doing the precise opposite? What a bloody hypocrite.

  7. Rolled Back? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    People who had grown up taking the internet's neutrality for granted now found that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had "rolled that back."

    What the hell does that mean? Are they talking about packet prioritization, viewpoint neutrality, trolling, hacking... The Trump administration "rolled back" network neutrality rules that had existed for roughly a year.

  8. Re:This is, frankly, sickening by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    TBL is not the old man yelling at the cloud. He's a highly intelligent person who cannot believe, with all this internet-provided freedom of information, people still make such ignorant decisions. Common failure of the reasonably well educated.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  9. That is exactly backwards by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Democracy needs an informed population to work.

    That is correct, and in why only in recent years has it really started to work.

    People trying to subvert democracy often attack it by misinforming the population

    Indeed that has been happening for a few decades now by a central core of media that withhold and shape information.

    in the last few years by convincing people that everything is fake and a lie

    And how did they do that? By in fact showing people directly, what were fakes and lies.

    simply choosing their own preferred truth is a valid choice.

    That's the thing though. Now anyone can really get the whole picture. They can see the actual video of what people did, and judge them on that instead of what the media claims they said or did.

    People complain that Trump voters ignore the "Truth" that Trump is whatever - racist, homophobic, etc. The reason Trump never has much impact from those claims, is because for the first time you can really see the falseness of them - you can see how Trump behaves now and in the past around women, around people of color, even around supporting gay marriage.

    Trump is unique compared to a lot of current politicians in that there is a lot of prior video of him and so people already had a sense of him before the media started trying to craft an alternative image.

    But going forward, more and more politicians will have the same thing apply - people will judge them based on what they have actually said and done instead of what the media claims about them. You can even see that with newer politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - she gets a lot of flak from the right, but you can watch a lot of video from her that is fairly reasonable, so the calls that she is crazy do not really stick.

    She has some ideas about socialism that I and others find wrong, but you can actually go see what she says and judger her based on that instead of by what others sat about her. So how is any of that a "lie"? People can be better informed now that at any point in history - the real problem is that the professional political class by and large suck giant donkey balls, and now that is easy for anyone to see. In the end that is not a "problem" at all, that is a solution and the world is undergoing a correction based on this new fact...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  10. Re: World wide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You'll have to enlighten me. How has the EU been punishing the UK? From where I stand it looks more like a whiny cunt trying to leave the club whilst stilling having access to the equipment and the cheap members bar.

    If the EU wanted to make it hard they would just say 'you're out, you get nothing, all treaties are void, goodbye'.

    The trouble with Brexit is that no-one who supports it actually has a realistic plan or even an inkling of what's involved. Not that that stops them moaning about how everyone's against them (I wonder why)

  11. Um, what? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We need a new internet because there were some election results he didn't like? Seriously?

  12. Re:World wide by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Nice how you slipped that "impeach Trump for nothing" bit in there. Obstruction of justice isn't nothing. Neither are illegal campaign contributions to shut up former lovers. If it were nothing, why all the lying and obstruction - which, basically, is what led to the Mueller investigation in the first place. The FBI was investigating Russian interference (which happened, and needed to be ferreted out) - having nothing to do with impeachment (unless, of course, they were in cahoots with the campaign). But Trump fired Comey, specifically (if his own statements can be believed - but then, isn't that kind of the point) to shut down that investigation, which rang all the obstruction alarm bells.

    Now it's quite possible that all of the obstruction and lying were merely Trump's attempts to preserve his pretenses of having won in a huge landslide, that he's a self-made billionaire, that he knows anything about anything... I'll grant you that. His narcissism and lying are that basic to his personality - and his actions may well have had nothing to do with attempts to cover up a Russia connection. But faced with all kinds of incriminating facts, should the DOJ just do nothing - because you say it's nothing? Clinton was impeached (wrongly, of course) for a consensual blowjob or two, and Trump's blown past that 'standard' a hundred times over...

    --
    Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
  13. Re: Simple by meta-monkey · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I don't want to blow up the system. I want to save the system by stopping a foreign invasion of people who don't share American values and are at best indifferent and at worst openly hostile to the people living here. I think the people trying to flood the country with foreigners are the ones trying to "blow up the system."

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.