Tag: World Wide Web Foundation

The Internet as a Tool for Democracy: Perhaps not

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.