Exactly 30 years ago, a young British computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee presented a research paper at his head. It ‘was “Information Management: A Proposal”, and worked for months. But he never thought it would revolutionize the world. The 33-year-old Berners-Lee had a written plan for what would become known as the World Wide Web. “Vague, but exciting”, scrawled his boss on board. Three decades later, more than half of the world’s online population. The Internet has become developing economies accelerated and transformed the way political campaigns. It has changed radically commerce, communication, and many other areas of life. But the complexity of this mindblowing new world of ubiquitous, readily available information has cast new unforeseen problems as well as solutions to old. The rise of Internet giants such as Facebook and collection for free reams of data of its users in return is far achieved by the original system of individual websites through the Google links that Berners-Lee in March 1989, and that he had introduced various impacts of these complex systems – such as the increase in the so-called “false news”, online harassment, the foreign influence operations and targeted advertising – are still playing in real time. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee spoke to TIME about his role of our new information age in sparks, and explains his optimism for the future: TIME: The amount of data that is now being created, programmers can afford, predict our behavior. Are you worried that the data can be used to influence us in ways we do not understand? Tim Berners-Lee: I came vision of an alternative world where data are available, but it is actually separate the user’s request, even when the applications are from the data .. So, if you use an application , you are asked where you want to store my data? And you have complete control over who has access to it. It would be a whole new world. We are talking about a future in which these programs work for you. They do not work for Amazon, do not work for Apple. She was very vocal to make sure that the Internet is open to everyone. But only about 50% of people in the world is online. Nevertheless, of course, the Internet has changed our world dramatically. Have you seen a change of similar magnitude when the other half of humanity goes online? I want it. I think it’s really incredible to watch. There is a predominance on the rich current web white men. Women and minority races are not so well represented. My guess is that we will see a wealth of different indigenous communities, for example. We are different people whose governments are working in different ways to see on board. Perhaps we have very effective new machine translation that give us windows into other cultures that we do not have time. It’s very exciting. If the condition that the World Wide Web for the first time 30 years before we have any sense of the impact it would have? I was not me. We did not even know that it would work. To some extent, there are still things that can go wrong with it, and we should not take for granted. You have to anticipate the problems that we currently see as misinformation and trolling? Yes and no. We have to imagine that people would do things on bad web? Absolutely. Very soon, we knew that if it is a powerful technology, are then used for good and evil, is like any other powerful technologies. But first, our feeling was philosophical that the web is to be a neutral medium. It is not for the train to try to correct humanity. mankind would drive the web you always hope more connected, and therefore perhaps more understanding of themselves – and therefore possibly less confrontational. That was our hope. But in general, we expect to daily life on the web as to be the day to day life on the road to have its edges and its smooth edges. So, what is a surprise, then, in the last 30 years? In the first 20 years, when people said to me, “Tim, I saw this web thing to you. And I found some really bad things about it:” I would say, “the way the web works, you are not following such links. If these link to the trash, do not go back. ” So we have lived in this world in the individuals of the right-thinking how it would be attentive to what appeared on the web. But then the era of Trump and the United Kingdom and Gibraltar European Union membership referendum was suddenly thrown. Not the results of the elections. But at this point people on the election road has seen it happen, and he realized that people were to believe things on the web that were really quite bizarre. The track type courted them because it allows them to create groups of people who believe the conspiracy theory, would these groups as groups of socially powerful people, believed that the true facts scientifically. It was a turning point? Yes, it was a turning point. We suddenly realized, in fact, we must ensure that the web serves humanity. Do not just keep it free and open, but make sure that the things that build the people in this room permissionless democracy really help. These are problems because of people or structures? And ‘the classic example of a farm of false news in Macedonia. To some extent, it’s hard to blame them, they were looking for all but one of life Google ads to exploit. Google ads machine would reward more for things that busy people true or false. They found that a title that people would attack was not truthful title – was a bit ‘weird. But it is not only the Macedonian children who were out of this money, but Google and Facebook itself. Can we trust tech giants to make their new systems if their profit incentives do not match what is best for the civil discourse? There are people in companies that are trying to do their best platforms. But there is also the academic community. When scientists repeatedly show what is wrong, and it is not fixed, yes, I think there is a problem. So how do we fix it? Among engineers always meet with scientists. It could be better. Increasingly, the major social networks provide an academic researcher. But is that really enough? If the profit is perverse incentives it is not so convincing that the incentive? Some people say that as long as the web rely on advertising never come to fruition. There are some people who say that advertising is the original sin of the Internet. But maybe people will decide that they want to live in a world without advertising, and do it for them, paying. I think it’s a game that there will be systems that are not based advertising. But it will still systems. Internet is full of many different things. There is also pressure on these companies by consumers. It ‘a pain, but it can change people from other social networks if they want. And there is always the danger in Europe, in particular Regulation. I believe that the regulation can be very important in the right place. And politics is what a lot of people talk about now.
The World Wide Web is 30 today. Here’s how the inventor thinks that we can solve the problem
