‘It’s not too late to fix it’: web inventor Tim Berners-Lee says he is in a ‘battle for the soul’ of the internet
www.theguardian.com
Founder of the world wide web says commercialisation means the net has been ‘optimised for nastiness’, but collaboration and compassion can prevail

When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free.

Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.

In Australia to promote his book, This is for Everyone, Berners-Lee is reflecting on what his invention has become – and how he and a community of collaborators can put the power of the web back into the hands of its users.

Berners-Lee describes his excitement in the earliest years of the web as “uncontainable”. Approaching 40 years on, a rebellion is brewing among himself and a community of like-minded activists and developers.

“We can fix the internet … It’s not too late,” he writes, describing his mission as a “battle for the soul of the web”.

Berners-Lee traces the first corruption of the web to the commercialisation of the domain name system, which he believes would have served web users better had it been managed by a nonprofit in the public interest. Instead, he says, in the 1990s the .com space was pounced on by “charlatans”.

  • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    13 hours ago

    Email is still extremely popular and used quite frequently for more than chatting with friends. Businesses use email to communicate with customers. Schools use email to communicate with parents. Doctors use email to communicate with patients. Utility bills are sent via email. Etc, etc, etc.

    Web portal, web portal, web portal, oh and web portal. Web portals are what people use. Apps, too. Email, you mean GMail and Outlook?

    • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      9 hours ago

      Web portal, web portal, web portal, oh and web portal. Web portals are what people use.

      That just sounds like “there’s an app for that” with extra steps. Why use this when you can just get the app? Why use that when you can just get the app?

      That’s part of what put us into this “everything is tracking you” predicament today.

      Apps, too. Email, you mean GMail and Outlook?

      I use Thunderbird on my phone and Outlook on my work phone. Also, email accessed through a web portal vs locally doesn’t mean anything when SMTP is used for both on the backend.

      That said, I hate web portals for everything. Many are poorly optimized for mobile, I don’t want to be stuck on desktop just to get a PDF of an invoice, and none of them actually notify me about anything. Email is already on my phone - it’s one of the definitive features that created the “smart” phone segment in the first place.