This is the testimony of Sir Timothy Berners-Lee.He appeared in front of the United States House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce to discuss the future of the World Wide Web. He was a leader of the effort which gave rise to the Web in the mid-90s and has watched it grow into a public resource which people depend on.
The rest is in his own words..
The special care we extend to the World Wide Web comes from a long tradition that democracies have of protecting their vital communications channels. We nurture and protect our information networks because they stand at the core of our economies, our democracies, and our cultural and personal lives. Of course, the imperative to assure the free flow of information has only grown given the global nature of the Internet and Web. The success of the World Wide Web, itself built on the open Internet, has depended on three critical factors:
1) unlimited links from any part of the Web to any other;
2) open technical standards as the basis for continued growth of innovation applications; and
3) separation of network layers, enabling independent innovation for network transport, routing and information applications.
From a technical perspective, the Web is a large collection of Web pages (written in the standard HTML format), linked to other pages (with the linked documents named using the URI standard), and accessed over the Internet (using the HTTP network protocol). In simple terms, the Web has grown because it's easy to write a Web page and easy to link to other pages. A current example of the low barriers to reading, writing and linking on the Web is the world of blogs. Blogs hardly existed five years ago, but have become an enormously popular means of expression for everything from politics to local news, to art and science. The low barriers to publishing pages and abundance of linking ability have come together, most recently with blogs, to create an open platform for expression and exchange of all kinds.
The Web, and everything which happens on it, rest on two things: technological protocols, and social conventions. The technological protocols, like HTTP and HTML, determine how computers interact. Social conventions, such as the incentive to make links to valuable resources, or the rules of engagement in a social networking web site, are about how people like to, and are allowed to, interact.
So how do we plan for a better future, better for society?
We ensure that that both technological protocols and social conventions respect basic values. That Web remains a universal platform: independent of any specific hardware device, software platform, language, culture, or disability. That the Web does not become controlled by a single company -- or a single country. By adherence to these principles we can ensure that Web technology, like the Internet, continues to serve as a foundation for bigger things to come.
My Response
I think that Sir Timothy Berners-Lee makes some great and very thoughtful points here and it is brilliant to be able to listen to one of the first pioneers of the World Wide Web and hear his views on how he thinks it has changed over the years. Blogs are mentioned in the extract and makes very interesting reading as it relates to our generation and is important. I was also interested to hear what his thoughts were on how the Internet is changing and expanding. I agree with a lot of the stuff he is saying here and think it vital that people should read this even if they don't take media as one way or another it will relate to them.
Thanks :)
