The Web’s Creator Looks to Reinvent It

[American]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/technology/the-webs-creator-looks-to-reinvent-it.html?_r=0

SAN FRANCISCO — Twenty-seven years ago, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web as a way for scientists to easily find information. It has since become the world’s most powerful medium for knowledge, communications and commerce — but that doesn’t mean Mr. Berners-Lee is happy with all of the consequences.
“It controls what people see, creates mechanisms for how people interact,” he said of the modern day web. “It’s been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people’s content, taking you to the wrong websites — that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create.”
So on Tuesday, Mr. Berners-Lee gathered in San Francisco with other top computer scientists — including Brewster Kahle, head of the nonprofit Internet Archive and an internet activist — to discuss a new phase for the web.
Today, the World Wide Web has become a system that is often subject to control by governments and corporations. Countries like China can block certain web pages from their citizens, and cloud services like Amazon Web Services hold powerful sway. So what might happen, the computer scientists posited, if they could harness newer technologies — like the software used for digital currencies, or the technology of peer-to-peer music sharing — to create a more decentralized web with more privacy, less government and corporate control, and a level of permanence and reliability?

Time for Web 2.0!

 

[Henrin]

Restoring the freedom of the internet from government intervention, spying and oversight is something I support 100%.

 

[clownboy]

Once the web went commercial government regulation and interference became a done deal. The web is not the total of the internet, it is just another car on that highway. In the late 80s and early 90s the community had that discussion. It was largely decided the usenet would remain free and the web would be allowed to go to commercial interests (think television - commercial but still required to carry "free" and educational content)