Countless scientific tools have made their way from the lab bench to everyday life. But perhaps none have been more pervasive than the World Wide Web. Developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 as a way to manage project information at the laboratory, the Web has since infiltrated the globe and affected the way we communicate, educate, entertain, inform and govern.
Twenty years after the technology became a publicly available service, the future of the Web remains a widely debated topic. This past Wednesday, Berners-Lee and former United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown discussed their views on the subject at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. They focused specifically on making the Web available to the communities and demographics around the world that remain unconnected.
Tim Berners-Lee (left) and Gordon Brown discuss the future of the Web in front of an audience at the University of Geneva. Photo by Felipe Fink Grael.
“Access to the Web should absolutely be a fundamental right,” Berners-Lee said. Following the civil rights movements for women, African Americans and the LGBT community, “the right to connectivity is the timely thing to fight for,” he said. “But even if we get those rights on paper and there is still no access, we lose.”
A large effort by the World Wide Web Foundation, led by Berners-Lee, aims to provide Web access to sub-Saharan Africa. Although many places lack proper infrastructure and the cost of broadband is prohibitively high, many Africans have access to mobile phones. Brown pointed out that Web access through mobile phones could enable better education, foster communication between doctors and HIV patients, or provide market information to farmers about the price of crops.
“There is an enormous opportunity for the poorest continent in the world to move quite quickly if it can harness this new technology to its benefit,” Brown said.
But the rural poor aren’t the only population without access. The urban poor, the elderly and the disabled are other groups that stand to benefit from being connected. In a world where everyday tasks such as applying for a job or renewing a driver’s license are relegated to the Web, “denial of access is denial to economic opportunity,” Brown said.
Berners-Lee added that although access should be guaranteed to 100 percent of humanity, the Web shouldn’t be forced upon those that choose not to use it.
Another major theme during the discussion was the role of the Web in government. Berners-Lee has long been an advocate of open government data, and has pushed both the UK and the US governments to make public information available on the Web.
“Data is valuable,” Berners-Lee said. “You can take all kinds of information and put it on a map.” Plotting bicycle accidents, for example, could lead to better traffic safety laws. Private citizens with access to data can generate new ideas and create businesses from them. “Putting data on the Web can have big returns for any country,” Berners-Lee said.
Conversely, the Web can be used by citizens to spread messages and facilitate widespread organization, as was the case in the recent political movements in Egypt and Tunisia.
“The Web is enabling people to do things in a far faster way and in a bigger way,” Brown said. “It’s putting people and their governments on the same page.”
Despite the evolution of the Web in social, economic and political spheres, many questions remain: How do we control authenticity on the Web? Who gets to decide what information is good and bad? How can we prevent abuse of the Web, either by governments using it to exercise power over their citizens or by individuals with malicious intentions?
Berners-Lee challenged the audience – university students and fellow “coding geeks” in particular – to think creatively and get started on finding the solutions.
