As the Web Turns 25, Sir Tim Berners-Lee Calls For A Web Magna Carta 80
Today marks the 25th anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee's "Information
Management: A Proposal," containing the ideas that led to the
World Wide Web. From its humble beginnings as a way to store linked
documents at CERN to... well, you're reading this now. To celebrate, the
W3C is encouraging
people to post their birthday greetings. Quoting Tim Berners-Lee:
"In the following quarter-century, the Web has changed the world in ways that I never could have imagined. There have been many exciting advances. It has generated billions of dollars in economic growth, turned data into the gold of the 21st century, unleashed innovation in education and healthcare, whittled away geographic and social boundaries, revolutionised the media, and forced a reinvention of politics in many countries by enabling constant two-way dialogue between the rulers and the ruled."
Martin S. and JestersGrind both wrote in to note that Tim
Berners-Lee is calling for the creation of a Web Magna Carta. Again Quoting Tim Berners-Lee "It's time for
us to make a big communal decision," he said. "In front of us are two
roads - which way are we going to go? Are we going to continue on the
road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more
control - more and more surveillance? Or are we going to set up a
bunch of values? Are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta
for the world wide web and say, actually, now it's so important, so
much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human
rights?"
How has the rise of the web affected your life? Also check out the CERN line mode browser simulation of the first web site.
Human rights (Score:5, Interesting)
that it becomes on a level with human rights?
Online rights are already on level with human rights. i.e.: ignored by governments, cried about by NGOs, impossible to defend, trampled upon with no consequence, ...
I mean... We did already agree that torturing and killing people was bad, right?
Re:The rulers and the ruled (Score:3, Interesting)
today more people realize that it is better to be free than "the ruled".
Nonsense. People are reactionary and fickle, and irrational. Most people don't want freedom. They want order and structure, and they don't care about whose toes they have to step on to get it.
Re:Thanks, Tim (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for fucking up the Internet.
He certainly did - Just like Ford fucked up the roads by making cars cheap enough so that almost anyone could have one.
All governments are tools (Score:2, Interesting)
of their wealthiest citizens. This is especially true in the United States. Now imagine how much more difficult it would have been to invade Iraq and steal their oil if the citizens of both the U.S. and Iraq routinely communicated, like over the web. Then the citizens of the aggressor would feel the pain of the thefts their government engages in . . . and might even go so far as to oppose them.
Opposing wars is a direct attack on the profits of both government minions and the wealthy who buy them. Therefore, the web must be controlled.
It really is as simple as that, and if you are truely patriotic for humanity, you will fight this trend as hard as you can.