In the recent 2018 Web Summit interview has Tim Berners-Lee, father of the Internet, lamenting the sorry state of the internet. TimBL has set up the World Wide Web Foundation, which espouses openness, freedom of speech and democracy. I just do not see the web this way. The internet is a communications tool that allows access to information, very much like a library. Who gets to enter the library and what information the library houses is controllable. I do not see TimBL’s lofty internet objectives coming to fruition. In China Xi jinping XJP has asked all its people for total loyalty to the Communist Party. As a communications tool the Internet can and does serve XJP’s purpose, and more. In the view of the CCP the Internet is also a tool to benefit society.
Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world.
In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, the inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to protect people’s rights and freedoms on the internet…
“For many years there was a feeling that the wonderful things on the web were going to dominate and we’d have a world with less conflict, more understanding, more and better science, and good democracy,” Berners-Lee told the Guardian. “But people have become disillusioned because of all the things they see in the headlines.”
“Humanity connected by technology on the web is functioning in a dystopian way. We have online abuse, prejudice, bias, polarisation, fake news, there are lots of ways in which it is broken. This is a contract to make the web one which serves humanity, science, knowledge and democracy,” he said…
Under the principles laid out in the document, which Berners-Lee calls a “Magna Carta for the web”, governments must ensure that its citizens have access to all of the internet, all of the time, and that their privacy is respected so they can be online “freely, safely and without fear.”source
These are lofty goals but makes the internet look like a tool for democracy. There are competing governing methods in the world, all which do use the Internet in a different way. As well, even in the West and other democratic countries, the Internet’s freedom and democracy has been manipulated for the benefit of others.
China’s Xi Jinping espouses that all Chinese people support the Chinese Communist Party first. This includes the internet. While I disagree with the CCP and its methods, I see no reason to believe they are misusing the internet in any way. They are free to control who gets to the library as well as what is stored in the library. Further, no country can tell another country what they can and cannot do with their library. China is an example to many other totalitarian countries of an alternative implementation of the web. They not only have the technical expertise to implement and ship, but are willing to openly encourage other countries to do the same.
The idea that the the Internet will get us to some utopian state, where the exchange of information will benefit humanity, is still possible. It is just that there are different interpretations for “benefit humanity”
“For many years there was a feeling that the wonderful things on the web were going to dominate and we’d have a world with less conflict, more understanding, more and better science, and good democracy,” Berners-Lee told the Guardian. “But people have become disillusioned because of all the things they see in the headlines.”
“Humanity connected by technology on the web is functioning in a dystopian way. We have online abuse, prejudice, bias, polarisation, fake news, there are lots of ways in which it is broken. This is a contract to make the web one which serves humanity, science, knowledge and democracy,” he said.
Under the principles laid out in the document, which Berners-Lee calls a “Magna Carta for the web”, governments must ensure that its citizens have access to all of the internet, all of the time, and that their privacy is respected so they can be online “freely, safely and without fear.”
I do agree that in Western countries that share like political views that this is possible and should be done, but the Internet merely functions as an extension to and a tool of democracy, and not its own entity. We should strive for openness, free speech and human rights. The Internet, as well as other communications channels are tools we can use to improve our society.
