Today, March 12, is the World Wide Web’s 29th birthday. Here’s a message from our founder as well as spider web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee on what nosotros require to ensure that everyone has access to a spider web worth having. Today, the WWW turns 29. This yr marks a milestone inward the web’s history: for the starting fourth dimension time, nosotros volition cross the tipping betoken when to a greater extent than than one-half of the world’s population volition live online. When I portion this exciting tidings amongst people, I tend to acquire ane of 2 concerned reactions:
How produce nosotros acquire the other one-half of the basis connected?
Are nosotros certain the relaxation of the basis wants to connect to the spider web nosotros get got today?
The threats to the spider web today are existent as well as many, including those that I described inward my final letter — from misinformation as well as questionable political advertising to a loss of command over our personal data. But I rest committed to making certain the spider web is a free, open, creative infinite — for everyone.
That vision is exclusively possible if nosotros acquire everyone online, as well as brand certain the spider web plant for people. I founded the Web Foundation to struggle for the web’s future. Here’s where nosotros must focus our efforts:
Close the digital divide
The dissever betwixt people who get got cyberspace access as well as those who produce non is deepening existing inequalities — inequalities that pose a serious global threat. Unsurprisingly, you’re to a greater extent than probable to live offline if you are female, poor, alive inward a rural surface area or a low-income country, or approximately combination of the above. To live offline today is to live excluded from opportunities to larn as well as earn, to access valuable services, as well as to participate inward democratic debate. If nosotros produce non invest seriously inward closing this gap, the final billion volition non live connected until 2042. That’s an entire generation left behind.
In 2016, the United Nations declared cyberspace access a human right, on par amongst create clean water, electricity, shelter as well as food. But until nosotros brand cyberspace access affordable for all, billions volition proceed to live denied this basic right. The target has been laid — the United Nations late adopted the Alliance for Affordable Internet’s threshold for affordability: 1 GB of mobile information for less than 2% of average monthly income. The reality, however, is that we’re soundless a long way off from reaching this target — inward approximately countries, the terms of 1GB of mobile broadband remains over 20% of average monthly income.
What volition it accept to genuinely accomplish this goal? We must back upward policies as well as describe of piece of employment organisation models that expand access to the world’s poorest through populace access solutions, such equally community networks as well as populace WiFi initiatives. We must invest inward securing reliable access for women as well as girls, as well as empowering them through digital skills training.
Make the spider web run for people
The spider web that many connected to years agone is non what novel users volition notice today. What was ane time a rich choice of blogs as well as websites has been compressed nether the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms. This concentration of mightiness creates a novel laid of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to command which ideas as well as opinions are seen as well as shared.
These dominant platforms are able to lock inward their seat yesteryear creating barriers for competitors. They acquire startup challengers, purchase upward novel innovations as well as hire the industry’s tiptop talent. Add to this the competitive payoff that their user information gives them as well as nosotros tin facial expression the side yesteryear side xx years to live far less innovative than the last.
What’s more, the fact that mightiness is concentrated amid then few companies has made it possible to weaponise the spider web at scale. In recent years, we’ve seen conspiracy theories tendency on social media platforms, faux Twitter as well as Facebook accounts stoke social tensions, external actors interfere inward elections, as well as criminals pocket troves of personal data.
We’ve looked to the platforms themselves for answers. Companies are aware of the problems as well as are making efforts to ready them — amongst each alter they brand affecting millions of people. The responsibleness — as well as sometimes burden — of making these decisions falls on companies that get got been built to maximise turn a profit to a greater extent than than to maximise social good. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 legal or regulatory framework that accounts for social objectives may assist ease those tensions.
Bring to a greater extent than voices to the ground on the web’s future
The futurity of the spider web isn’t merely virtually those of us who are online today, but also those yet to connect. Today’s powerful digital economic scheme calls for potent standards that residual the interests of both companies as well as online citizens. This way thinking virtually how nosotros align the incentives of the tech sector amongst those of users as well as guild at large, as well as consulting a various cross-section of guild inward the process.
Two myths currently throttle our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the exclusively possible describe of piece of employment organisation model for online companies, as well as the myth that it’s likewise slowly to alter the way platforms operate. On both points, nosotros require to live a lilliputian to a greater extent than creative.
While the problems facing the spider web are complex as well as large, I remember nosotros should come across them equally bugs: problems amongst existing code as well as software systems that get got been created yesteryear people — as well as tin live fixed yesteryear people. Create a novel laid of incentives as well as changes inward the code volition follow. We tin pattern a spider web that creates a constructive as well as supportive environment.
Today, I desire to challenge us all to get got greater ambitions for the web. I desire the spider web to reverberate our hopes as well as fulfil our dreams, rather than magnify our fears as well as deepen our divisions.
As the slowly cyberspace activist, John Perry Barlow, ane time said: “a adept way to invent the futurity is to predict it”. It may audio utopian, it may audio impossible to accomplish afterwards the setbacks of the final 2 years, but I desire us to imagine that futurity as well as build it.
Let’s get together the brightest minds from business, technology, government, civil society, the arts as well as academia to tackle the threats to the web’s future. At the Web Foundation, nosotros are ready to play our business office inward this mission as well as build the spider web nosotros all want. Let’s run together to arrive possible.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Buat lebih berguna, kongsi:
