Tim Berners-Lee, credited with "founding" the Internet in the early 1990s, recently said in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that if the Internet is left to evolve unchecked, "bad phenomena" will pretty much make it useless.
He further warned that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way."
He specifically attacks blogs and bloggers because of "inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information."
"The blogging world works by people reading blogs and linking to them. You're taking suggestions of what you read from people you trust. That, if you like, is a very simple system, but in fact the technology must help us express much more complicated feelings about who we'll trust with what," he said.
photo:AP
He evidently wants to make sure that the poor dupes on the Internet "can establish the original source of the information they digest."
What's he really saying? Nothing. When you read it, you see that he's smoking something. Ok. He is saying something - he wants it to be somehow controlled. EvidentlyHe thinks people are stupid and need his benevolent guidance.
When you think of the past offline world of media, there are an infinite number of situations where you couldn't trace the source of something; even today it's true. Think "unidentified source."
The other side of it is we've always had gossip columnists and tabloids around forever. People know when they're reading entertainment fodder or serious information.
The major reason he's saying this is that he's promoting a partnership between Southampton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create the first degree in Web science. This is all just a pitch to sell potential students on enrolling in the program.
He needs to look at himself for being one of those throwing around "untruths" just to promote some pet project.
Comment Preview