{"id":8441,"date":"2019-03-11T23:49:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T23:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/tim-berners-lee-stop-webs-downward-plunge-to-dysfunctional-future\/"},"modified":"2019-03-11T23:49:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T23:49:30","slug":"tim-berners-lee-stop-webs-downward-plunge-to-dysfunctional-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/tim-berners-lee-stop-webs-downward-plunge-to-dysfunctional-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Berners-Lee: &#8216;Stop web&#8217;s downward plunge to dysfunctional future&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Sir Tim Berners-Lee pictured during an interview with the BBC at Cern's data centre\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/F24C\/production\/_105982026_tbl1c.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web before launching the first ever website in 1991<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Global action is required to tackle the web&#8217;s &#8220;downward plunge to a dysfunctional future&#8221;, its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>He made the comments in an exclusive interview to mark 30 years since he submitted <a href=\"http:\/\/info.cern.ch\/Proposal.html\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">his proposal for the web.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sir Tim said people had realised how their data could be &#8220;manipulated&#8221; after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/topics\/c81zyn0888lt\/facebook-cambridge-analytica-scandal\" class=\"story-body__link\">the Cambridge Analytica scandal.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>However, he said he felt problems such as data breaches, hacking and misinformation could be tackled.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/webfoundation.org\/2019\/03\/web-birthday-30\/\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">In an open letter<\/a> also published on Monday, the web&#8217;s creator acknowledged that many people doubted the web could be a force for good.<\/p>\n<p>He had his own anxieties about the web&#8217;s future, he told the BBC: &#8220;I&#8217;m very concerned about nastiness and misinformation spreading.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But he said he felt that people were beginning to better understand the risks they faced as web users.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When the Cambridge Analytica thing went down [people] realised that elections had been manipulated using data that they contributed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He added that in recent years he has increasingly felt that the principles of an open web need to be safeguarded.<\/p>\n<p>In his letter, Sir Tim outlined three specific areas of &#8220;dysfunction&#8221; that he said were harming the web today:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">malicious activity such as hacking and harassment<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">problematic system design such as business models that reward clickbait<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">unintended consequences, such as aggressive or polarised discussions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These things could be dealt with, in part, through new laws and systems that limit bad behaviour online, he said.<\/p>\n<p>He cited the <a href=\"https:\/\/contractfortheweb.org\/\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">Contract for the Web project,<\/a> which he helped to launch late last year.<\/p>\n<p>But initiatives like this would require all of society to contribute &#8211; from members of the public to business and political leaders.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need open web champions within government &#8211; civil servants and elected officials who will take action when private sector interests threaten the public good and who will stand up to protect the open web,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption body-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Wandering round the data centre at Cern, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was in a playful mood, remembering how he&#8217;d plugged the very first web server into the centre&#8217;s uninterruptible power supply over Christmas so that nobody would switch it off &#8211; only for the whole place to be powered down.<\/p>\n<p>But as we talked about what had happened since he submitted his proposal for the web 30 years ago &#8211; described by his boss as &#8220;vague but exciting&#8221; &#8211; Sir Tim&#8217;s mood darkened. In the last few years, he told me, he&#8217;d realised it was not enough to just campaign for an open web and leave people to their own devices.<\/p>\n<p>S\u00eer Tim has a plan &#8211; the Contract for the Web &#8211; to put things back on the right track but it depends on governments and corporations doing their part, and the citizens of the web pressing them to act.<\/p>\n<p>When, as my last question, I asked Sir Tim whether the overall impact of the web had been good, I expected an upbeat answer. Instead, gesturing to indicate an upward and then a downward curve, he said that after a good first 15 years, things had turned bad and a &#8220;mid-course correction&#8221; was needed. <\/p>\n<p>His brilliant creation has grown into a troubled adolescent &#8211; and Sir Tim sees it as his personal mission to put the web back on the right track.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption body-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Sir Tim&#8217;s vision was &#8220;at once utopian and realistic&#8221;, said Jonathan Zittrain, author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.<\/p>\n<p>It rested on the idea that a free and open web would empower its users, rather than reduce them to simply being consumers, he explained. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I see Tim&#8217;s letter not only as a call to build a better web, but to rededicate ourselves to the core principles it embodies,&#8221; he told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>Those principles, he said, included universality of access and transparency &#8211; the ability to see and understand how web applications work.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-47524474\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image caption Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web before launching the first ever website in 1991 Global action is required to tackle the web&#8217;s &#8220;downward plunge to a dysfunctional future&#8221;, its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has told the BBC. He made the comments in an exclusive interview to mark 30 years since he &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}