30 Years of the Web
Today is the thirtieth birthday of the world wide web, the very technology behind
how you are reading this right now. I've been surfing for roughly half that time,
and over the years it has become an increasingly large part of my life, as it has
for many other people. In an
open letter, Dr Frankenstein
Sir Tim Berners-Lee had some reservations about his creation and the path on
which it was headed. His three main points are that the web now enables widespread,
massive-scale criminality; corporate greed and exploitation; and previously untold
access to polarising opinions which frequently amount to vitriol and hate speech.
He makes some good points. The internet is, at least in my mind, worse than it once was, to the extent tha it is no longer a slam-dunk net positive for humanity. I've spent a lot of time recently auditing my own use of both the web, and technology in general, to ensure that it is beneficial in my life. The good news is that I am confident it is - but care must be taken to avoid slipping into bad habits which could change that, especially when millions of intelligent man-hours have gone into trapping me inside various walled gardens.
I do have some bad news for Timmy boy though. The reason he believed the web would be such a great thing is ultimately the same reason he takes issue today. The web is getting ever closer to living up to its world-wide moniker, and the more people there are regularly using the web, the more the web is shaped by the flaws of people. En masse state sponsored crime is hardly an idea unique to cyberspace, neither is corporate exploitation, neither is propagandha. So I'm afraid that all the open standards, goodwill and not-for-profit donations in the world (wide web) will not change the nature of the web now - only by restricting who can use it could we claw back what once was.
The internet reflects the other side of humanity too - the inherent good. It's not as obvious as the colossal piles of manure, but seek and ye shall find. People are still kind, funny, insightful, wondrous beings, and you can find those qualities aplenty in the right dark, secluded corners of the web.
This blog is absolutely not one such corner however.