The Web's Creator Thinks We Need a New One That Governments Can't Control

'The web has created millions of jobs, impacted nearly every industry, connected people, and arguably made the world a better place. But the person who started it all isn't exactly pleased with the way things have turned out to be. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, believes that the way it works in the present day "completely undermines the spirit of helping people create." The Next Web reports: "Edward Snowden showed we've inadvertently built the world's largest surveillance network with the web," said Brewster Kahle, who heads up Internet Archive. And he's not wrong: governments across the globe keep an eye on what their citizens are accessing online and some censor content on the Web in an effort to control what they think. To that end, Berners-Lee, Kahle and other pioneers of the modern Web are brainstorming ideas for a new kind of information network that can't be controlled by governments or powered by megacorporations like Amazon and Google.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/06/08/196225 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 13:10:27 +1200, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, believes that the way it works in the present day "completely undermines the spirit of helping people create."'
In retrospect, this was an inevitable consequence of the asymmetric client-server nature of the WWW. The underlying Internet protocols put the smarts at the periphery, rather than in the network, and this makes sense: it means you don’t need permission from the network owners to create new applications (e.g. SSH, BitTorrent, the WWW). But the WWW itself gives power to website operators in proportion to how many users they can attract. And this is what concentrates so much control in the hands of companies like FaceBook and Google. Sure, you can set up your own rival services; but how do you attract users to them? Bruce Schneier calls this the “Feudal Internet” <https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/06/you_have_no_control.html>.
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
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Peter Reutemann