World Wide Web creator warns of cheats and liars

mkpdavies · 05-11-2006, 04:47 AM

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/bizf.../05/2003334970

Quote:

The creator of the World Wide Web said on Thursday night that the Internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the Web in the early 1990s, says that if the Internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness.

Is he talking about the English Democrats?

Quote:

He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the Web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.

Berners-Lee believes devotees of blogging sites take too much information on trust.

Well, I'd like to think people go into reading stuff realising it could be a load of bull and use common sense and ask questions to make sure they come to a sound opinion. Is this guy suggesting the biased rubbish we are fed by the mainstream press is any better? Sounds like some people are getting a bit worried that people are beginning to think for themselves a bit too much.

Quote:

The next generation of the Internet needs to be able to reassure users that they can establish the original source of the information they digest.

Quote:

The new discipline is expected to gain widespread support from huge Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon, as well as more traditional computing giants such as Microsoft and IBM. The ultimate task for students of Web science will be to come up with the next generation of the Internet -- and bring about the "semantic Web," a more intelligent version of the systems we use today.

He says that means no loss of freedom, but I wouldn't be so sure. Already youtube is now banning people for posting the wrong views. A guy call Warren25 (I posted one of him slamming the BNP and he also did a diss of UKIP too, though not so bad) has just been banned for his views on GW Bush. I wonder if Google hadn't taken over if that would have been the case.

Also Google has been caught massaging searches, by resetting hits on sites the US government don't like.

The lock down is starting to happen.

John Carter · 05-11-2006, 01:12 PM

And all this could have been avoided by Berners-Lee maintaining personal control over the web (i.e. offering the use of HTTP/HTML as freeware but under a GNU-style licence - anyone caught removing freedom could have their licence to use HTTP/HTML revoked).

Internationalist · 05-11-2006, 01:17 PM

It's true that there are a lot of lies and rubbish on the internet but I dread to think what would have happened if some UN-approved committee had taken control of it in its early days. Or if we needed an EU licence to publish anything.

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05-11-2006, 01:12 PM	#2 (permalink)
John Carter Uber Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: On Sabbatical Posts: 5,110	And all this could have been avoided by Berners-Lee maintaining personal control over the web (i.e. offering the use of HTTP/HTML as freeware but under a GNU-style licence - anyone caught removing freedom could have their licence to use HTTP/HTML revoked).

05-11-2006, 01:17 PM	#3 (permalink)
Internationalist Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 1,063	It's true that there are a lot of lies and rubbish on the internet but I dread to think what would have happened if some UN-approved committee had taken control of it in its early days. Or if we needed an EU licence to publish anything.