p2pnet - rss feed: Berners-Lee’s independent web
p2pnet.net news:- Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen’s College at Oxford University, England, in 1976. While he was there he built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an TV set.
These days, he’s director of the World Wide Web Consortium, senior researcher at MIT’s CSAIL where he leads the decentralized information group (DIG), and professor of computer science at Southampton ECS.
And he’s worried about what might happen to his creation.
“When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission,” he says on his blog. “Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.”
Yesterday, talking to US lawmakers, he re-emphasised the message saying it’s vital the web remains, “independent of any specific hardware device, software platform, language, culture, or disability” and that it doesn’t become controlled by a single company, “or a single country”.
Below is the full text of the speech he gave to the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, the group responsible for Net and telecommunications laws in the States.
Click here for a .pdf, here to go to the online version, or here for an archived video webcast (Windows Media Player needed).
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Testimony of Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, CSAIL Decentralized Information Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hearing on the “Digital Future of the United States: Part I - The Future of the World Wide Web”
Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Upton, and Members of the Committee. It is
my honor to appear before you today to discuss the future of the World Wide
Web. I would like to offer some of my experience of having designed the
original foundations of the Web, what I’ve learned from watching it grow, and
some of the exciting and challenging developments I see in the future of the
Web. Though I was privileged to lead the effort that gave rise to the Web in
the mid-1990s, it has long passed the point of being something designed by a
single person or even a single organization. It has become a public resource
upon which many individuals, communities, companies and governments depend.
And, from its beginning, it is a medium that has been created and sustained
by the cooperative efforts of people all over the world.
To introduce myself, I should mention that I studied Physics at Oxford,
but on graduating discovered the new world of microprocessors and joined the
electronics and computer science industry for several years. In 1980, I
worked on a contract at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, and
wrote for my own benefit a simple program for tracking the various parts of
the project using linked note cards. In 1984 I returned to CERN for ten
years, during which time I found the need for a universal information system,
and developed the World Wide Web as a side project in 1990. In 1994, the need
for coordination of the Web became paramount, and I left to come to MIT,
which became the first of now three international host institutes for the
W3C since that time. I hold the
chair at MIT where I pursue research on advanced Web technologies with
the MIT Decentralized Information
Group. The testimony I offer here today is purely my own opinion and does
not necessarily reflect the views of the World Wide Web Consortium or any of
its Members.
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. As a Federal
judge said in defense of freedom of expression on the Internet:
The Internet is a far more speech-enhancing medium than print, the
village green, or the mails…. The Internet may fairly be regarded as a
never-ending worldwide conversation.[1]
Therefore it is incumbent on all of us to understand what our role is in
fostering continued growth, innovation, and vitality of the World Wide Web. I
am gratified that the United States and many other democracies around the
world have taken up this challenge. My hope today is to help you to explore
the role this committee and this Congress has in building upon the great
advances that are in store for the Web.
I. Foundations of the World Wide 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. Today these characteristics of the Web are easily
overlooked as obvious, self-maintaining, or just unimportant. All who use the
Web to publish or access information take it for granted that any Web page on
the planet will be accessible to anyone who has an Internet connection,
regardless whether it is over a dialup modem or a high speed multi-megabit
per second digital access line. The last decade has seen so many new
ecommerce startups, some of which have formed the foundations of the new
economy, that we now expect that the next blockbuster Web site or the new
homepage for your kid’s local soccer team will just appear on the Web without
any difficulty.
Today I will speak primarily about the World Wide Web. I hesitate to point
out that the Web is just one of the many applications that run on top of the
Internet. As with other Internet applications such as email, instant
messaging, and voice over IP, the Web would have been impossible to create
without the Internet itself operating as an open platform. [
A. Universal linking: Anyone can connect to anyone, any page can link to
any page
How did the Web grow from nothing to the scale it is at today? 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. The story of the growth of
the World Wide Web can be measured by the number of Web pages that are
published and the number of links between pages. Starting with one page and
one site just about 15 years ago, there are now over 100,000,000 web sites[
pages as of 2005. What makes it easy to create links from one page to another
is that there is no limit to the number of pages or number of links possible
on the Web. Adding a Web page requires no coordination with any central
authority, and has an extremely low, often zero, additional cost. What’s
more, the protocol that allows us to follow these links (HTTP) is a
non-discriminatory protocol. It allows us to follow any link at all,
regardless of content or ownership. So, because its so easy to write a Web
page, link to another page, and follow these links around, people have done a
lot of this. Adding a page provides content, but adding a link provide the
organization, structure and endorsement to information on the Web which turn
the content as a whole into something of great value.
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.[
communications system that will carry virtually anything (any type of
information) is somewhat like other infrastructures we depend upon: the mail
system, the road system, and the telephone system. It stands in contrast to
more closed systems such as the broadcast or cable television networks. Those
closed systems perform valuable functions as well, but their impact in
society is different and less pervasive.
The universality and flexibility of the Web’s linking
a unique capacity to break down boundaries of distance, language, and domains
of knowledge. These traditional barriers fall away because the cost and
complexity of a link is unaffected by most boundaries that divide other
media. It’s as easy to link from information about commercial law in the
United States to commercial law in China, as it is to make the same link from
Massachusetts’ Commercial Code to that of Michigan. These links work even
though they have to traverse boundaries of distance, network operators,
computer operating systems, and a host of other technical details that
previously served to divide information. The Web’s ability to allow people to
forge links is why we refer to it as an abstract information space, rather
than simply a network. Other open systems such as the mails, the roads or the
telephones come to perform a function in society that transcends their simple
technical characteristics. In these systems, phone calls from the wireline
networks travel seamlessly to wireless providers. Mails from one country
traverse borders with minimal friction, and the cars we buy work on any roads
we can find. Open infrastructures become general purpose infrastructure on
top of which large scale social systems are built. The Web takes this
openness one step further and enables a continually evolving set of new
services that combine information at a global scale previously not possible.
This universality has been the key enabler of innovation on the Web and will
continue to be so in the future.
B. Open Foundation for Information-driven Innovation
The Web has not only been a venue for the free exchange of ideas, but also
it has been a platform for the creation of a wide and unanticipated variety
of new services. Commercial applications including eBay, Google, Yahoo, and
Amazon.com are but a few examples of the extraordinary innovation that is
possible because of the open, standards-based, royalty-free technology that
makes up the Web. Whether developing an auction site, a search engine, or a
new way of selling consumer goods, e-commerce entrepreneurs have been able
develop new services with confidence that they will be available for use by
anyone with an Internet connection and a Web browser, regardless of operating
system, computer hardware, or the ISP chosen by that user.[
has been equally robust. Early Web sites such as Thomas have led the way in
efforts to make the legislative process more open and transparent, and
non-commercial sites such as the Wikipedia have pioneered new collaborate
styles of information sharing. The flexibility and openness inherent in Web
standards also make this medium a powerful foundation on which to build
services and applications that are truly accessible for people with
disabilities, as well as people who need to transform content for purposes
other than that for which it was originally intended.
The lesson from the proliferation of new applications and services on top
of the Web infrastructure is that innovation will happen provided it has a
platform of open technical standards, a flexible, scalable architecture, and
access to these standards on royalty-free ($0 fee patent licenses) terms. At
the World Wide Web Consortium, we will only standardize technology if it can
be implemented on a royalty-free basis. So, all who contribute to the
development of technical standards at the W3C are required to agree to
provide royalty-free licenses to any patents they may hold if those patents
would block compliance with the standard. [6] Consider as
a comparison the very successful Apple iTunes+iPod music distribution
environment. This integration of hardware, software, Web service shows an
intriguing mix of proprietary technology and open standards. The iTunes
environment consists of two parts: sales of music and videos, and
distribution of podcasts. The sale of music is managed by a proprietary
platform run by Apple with the aim of preventing copyright infringement.
However, because Apple uses closed, non-standard technology for its copy
protection (known as Digital Rights Management), the growth is seen as
limited. In fact, Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently wrote that the market for
online music sales is being limited by the lack of open access to DRM
technology.[7] By contrast, the podcast component of iTunes is growing quite dramatically, providing a means for many small and large audio and video distributors to share or sell their wares on the Web. Unlike the music and video sales, podcasts are based on open standards, assuring that it’s easy to create, edit and distribute the podcast content.
C. Separation of Layers
When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask
anyone’s permission. The Web, as a new application, rolled out over the
existing Internet without any changes to the Internet itself. This is the
genius of the design of the Internet, for which I take no credit. Applying
the age old wisdom of design with interchangeable parts and separation of
concerns, each component of the Internet and the applications that run on top
of it are able develop and improve independently. This separation of layers
allows simultaneous but autonomous innovation to occur at many levels all at
once. One team of engineers can concentrate on developing the best possible
wireless data service, while another can learn how to squeeze more and more
bits through fiber optic cable. At the same time, application developers such
as myself can develop new protocols and services such as voice over IP,
instant messaging, and peer-to-peer networks. Because of the open nature of
the Internet’s design, all of these continue to work well together even as
each one is improving itself.
II. Looking forward
Having described how the Web got to where it is, let us shift to the question of where it might go from here. I hope that I’ve already persuaded you that the evolution of the Web is not in the hands of any one person, me or anyone else. But I’d like to highlight three areas in which I expect exciting developments in the near future. First, the Web will get better and better at helping us to manage, integrate, and analyze data. Today, the Web is quite effective at helping us to publish and discover documents, but the individual information elements within those documents (whether it be the date of any event, the price of a item on a catalog page, or a mathematical formula) cannot be handled directly as data. Today you can see the data with your browser, but can’t get other computer programs to manipulate or analyze it without going through a lot of manual effort yourself. As this problem is solved, we can expect that Web as a whole to look more like a large database or spreadsheet, rather than just a set of linked documents. Second, the Web will be accessible from a growing diversity of networks (wireless, wireline, satellite, etc.) and will be available on a ever increasing number of different types of devices. Finally, in a related trend, Web applications will become a more and more ubiquitous throughout our human environment, with walls, automobile dashboards, refrigerator doors all serving as displays giving us a window onto the Web.
A. Data Integration
Digital information about nearly every aspect of our lives is being
created at an astonishing rate. Locked within all of this data is the key to
knowledge about how to cure diseases, create business value, and govern our
world more effectively. The good news is that a number of technical
innovations (RDF which is to data what HTML is to documents, and the Web
Ontology Language (OWL) which allows us to express how data sources connect
together) along with more openness in information sharing practices are
moving the World Wide Web toward what we call the Semantic Web. Progress
toward better data integration will happen through use of the key piece of
technology that made the World Wide Web so successful: the link. The power of
the Web today, including the ability to find the pages we’re looking for,
derives from the fact that documents are put on the Web in standard form, and
then linked together. The Semantic Web will enable better data integration by
allowing everyone who puts individual items of data on the Web to link them
with other pieces of data using standard formats.
To appreciate the need for better data integration, compare the enormous
volume of experimental data produced in commercial and academic drug
discovery laboratories around the world, as against the stagnant pace of drug
discovery. While market and regulatory factors play a role here, life science
researchers are coming to the conclusion that in many cases no single lab, no
single library, no single genomic data repository contains the information
necessary to discover new drugs. Rather, the information necessary to
understand the complex interactions between diseases, biological processes in
the human body, and the vast array of chemical agents is spread out across
the world in a myriad of databases, spreadsheets, and documents.
Scientists are not the only ones who need better data integration.
Consider the investment and finance sector, a marketplace in which profit is
generated, in large part, from having the right information, at the right
time, and reaching correct conclusions based on analysis and insight drawn
from that information. Successful investment strategies are based on finding
patterns and trends in an increasingly diverse set of information sources
(news, market data, historical trends, commodity prices, etc.). Leading edge
financial information providers are now developing services that allow users
to easily integrate the data they have, about their own portfolios or
internal market models, with the information delivered by the information
service. The unique value creation is in the integration services, not in the
raw data itself or even in the software tools, most of which will be built on
open source components.
New data integration capabilities, when directed at personal information,
pose substantial privacy challenges which are hardly addressed by today’s
privacy laws. The technology of today’s Web already helps reveal far more
about individuals, their behavior, their reading interest, political views,
personal associations, group affiliations, and even health and financial
status. In some cases, this personal information is revealed by clever
integration of individual pieces of data on the Web that provide clues to
otherwise unavailable information. In other cases, people actually reveal a
lot about themselves, but with the intent that it only used in certain
contexts by certain people. These shifts in the way we relate to personal
information require serious consideration in many aspects of our social and
legal lives. While we are only just beginning to see these shifts, now is the
time to examine a range of legal and technical options that will preserve our
fundamental privacy values for the future without unduly stifling beneficial
new information processing and sharing capabilities. Our research group at
MIT is investigating new technologies to make the most of the Semantic Web,
as well as both technical and public policy models that will help bring
increased transparency and accountability to the World Wide Web and other
large scale information systems.[8] Our belief is that in order to protect privacy and other public policy values, we need to research and develop new technical mechanisms that provide great transparency into the ways in which information in the system is used, and provide accountability for those uses with respect to what ever are the prevailing rules.
B. Network Diversity and Device Independence
The Web has always been accessible from a variety of devices over a
variety of networks. From early on, one could browse the Web from a
Macintosh, a Windows PC or a Linux-based computer. However, for a long time
the dominant mode of using the Web was from some desktop or laptop computer
with a reasonably large display. Increasingly, people will use non-PC devices
that have either much smaller or much larger displays, and will reach the
Internet through a growing diversity of networks. At one end of this
spectrum, the devices will seem more like cell phones. At the other end, they
will seem more like large screen TVs. There are, of course, technical
challenges associated with squeezing a Web page designed for a 17 inch screen
into the two to four inch display available on a mobile phone or PDA. Some of
these will be solved through common standards and some through innovative new
interface techniques. All of this means more convenience for users and more
opportunity for new Web services that are tailored to people who are
somewhere other than their desks.
Growth in access networks and Web-enabled applications presents a number
of important opportunities. For example, more robust, redundant network
services together with innovative uses of community-based social networks on
the Web are coming to play an increasing role in areas such as emergency
planning and notification.[9] Reports about ad hoc communication networks supporting disaster relief efforts are just one illustration of the benefit of the openness, flexibility and accessible of the Internet and Web. This one area is a microcosm of many of the issues that we are discussing today, because in order to work well it requires seamless integration of diverse types of data; repurposing that data instantly into valid formats for a myriad of different Web devices; and including appropriate captions, descriptions, and other necessary accessibility information. I would encourage all web sites designers to ensure that their material conforms not only to W3C standards, but also to guidelines for accessibility for people with disabilities, and for mobile access.
C. Ubiquitous Web Applications
In the future, the Web will seem like it’s everywhere, not just on our desktop or mobile device. As LCD technology becomes cheaper, walls of rooms, and even walls of buildings, will become display surfaces for information from the Web. Much of the information that we receive today through a specialized application such as a database or a spreadsheet will come directly from the Web. Pervasive and ubiquitous web applications hold much opportunity for innovation and social enrichment. They also pose significant public policy challenges. Nearly all of the information displayed is speech but is being done in public, possibly in a manner accessible to children. Some of this information is bound to be personal, raising privacy questions. Finally, inasmuch as this new ubiquitous face of the Web is public, it will shape the nature of the public spaces we work, shop, do politics, and socialize in.
D. The Web is Not Complete
Progress in the evolution of the Web to date has been quite gratifying to
me. But the Web is by no means finished.
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.
As the Web passes through its first decade of widespread use, we still
know surprisingly little about these complex technical and social mechanisms.
We have only scratched the surface of what could be realized with deeper
scientific investigation into its design, operation and impact on society.
Robust technical design, innovative business decisions, and sound public
policy judgment all require that we are aware of the complex interactions
between technology and society. We call this awareness Web Science: the
science and engineering of this massive system for the common good.[
efforts, MIT and the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom have
created the Web Science Research
Initiative. In concert with an international Scientific Advisory Council
of distinguished computer scientists, social scientists, and legal scholars,
WSRI will help create an intellectual foundations, educational atmosphere,
and resource base to allow researchers to take the Web seriously as an object
of scientific enquiry and engineering innovation.
III. Conclusion
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.
It is my hope, Chairman Markey, members of the committee, that an
understanding of the nature of the Web will guide you in your future work,
and that the public at large can count on you to hold these values to the
best of your ability. I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you
and am ready to help your efforts in future.
For More Information
Contact Daniel J. Weitzner, Co-Director, MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group
Notes
[1] American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno,
929 F. Supp. 824, 844 (E.D. Pa. 1996) (Dalzell, J.)
[2] Kapor, M. and Weitzner, D. “Social and
Industrial Policy for Public Networks: Visions for the Future”. Harasim and
Walls, eds. Global Networks: Computers and International Communication.
Oxford University Press. Oxford. (1994)
[3] Netcraft February 2007 Web Server Survey.
[4] Weinberger, D., Small Pieces Loosely
Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web. Perseus Books. (2002)
[5] Note that due to failure by some browser
vendors to comply fully with standards, web site developers sometimes have to
go to extra trouble to make it so that their sites actually work properly on
all browsers.
[6] Overview and Summary of the W3C Patent
Policy,
W3C Patent Policy. D. Weitzner, Standards, Patents and the Dynamics of
Innovation on the World Wide Web.
[7] Jobs wrote on the Apple Web site:
“Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in
open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased
from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all
players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would
embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license
Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we
would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod
ever made will play this DRM-free music,” Steve Jobs, Thoughts on Music
(February 6, 2007),
[8] Weitzner, Abelson, Berners-Lee, Hanson,
Hendler, Kagal, McGuinness, Sussman, Waterman, Transparent Accountable Data
Mining: New Strategies for Privacy Protection,;
CSAIL Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2006-007 (27 January 2006).
[9] B. Shneiderman, and J. Preece, PUBLIC
HEALTH: 911.gov, Science 315 (5814), 944 (16 February 2007)
[10] “Creating a Science of the Web” Tim
Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall, James Hendler, Nigel Shadbolt, Daniel J. Weitzner.
Science 313, 11 August 2006. And see the Web Science Research Initiative,
Also See:
CNET News - Justice Department takes aim at image-sharing sites, March 2, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
