Image: Illustration by John Hendrix
In Brief
- The principle of universality allows the Web to work no matter what hardware, software, network connection or language you use and to handle information of all types and qualities. This principle guides Web technology design.
- Technical standards that are open and royalty-free allow people to create applications without anyone’s permission or having to pay. Patents, and Web services that do not use the common URIs for addresses, limit innovation.
- Threats to the Internet, such as companies or governments that interfere with or snoop on Internet traffic, compromise basic human network rights.
- Web applications, linked data and other future Web technologies will flourish only if we protect the medium’s basic principles.
More In This Article
The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990. It consisted of one Web site and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer. The simple setup demonstrated a profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere. In this spirit, the Web spread quickly from the grassroots up. Today, at its 20th anniversary, the Web is thoroughly integrated into our daily lives. We take it for granted, expecting it to “be there” at any instant, like electricity.
The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles.
The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.
If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.
Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected.
Yet people seem to think the Web is some sort of piece of nature, and if it starts to wither, well, that’s just one of those unfortunate things we can’t help. Not so. We create the Web, by designing computer protocols and software; this process is completely under our control. We choose what properties we want it to have and not have. It is by no means finished (and it’s certainly not dead). If we want to track what government is doing, see what companies are doing, understand the true state of the planet, find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, not to mention easily share our photos with our friends, we the public, the scientific community and the press must make sure the Web’s principles remain intact—not just to preserve what we have gained but to benefit from the great advances that are still to come.
Universality Is the Foundation
Several principles are key to assuring that the Web becomes ever more valuable. The primary design principle underlying the Web’s usefulness and growth is universality. When you make a link, you can link to anything. That means people must be able to put anything on the Web, no matter what computer they have, software they use or human language they speak and regardless of whether they have a wired or wireless Internet connection. The Web should be usable by people with disabilities. It must work with any form of information, be it a document or a point of data, and information of any quality—from a silly tweet to a scholarly paper. And it should be accessible from any kind of hardware that can connect to the Internet: stationary or mobile, small screen or large.
Rights & Permissions
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39 Comments
Add CommentThe key difference between the web (open), email (open), and facebook (closed), twitter (closed), skype (closed) is the use of A and MX records. The use of SRV name server records allows a single URI like an email address to serve as the ID/address of multiple services as in the case of joindiaspora.com, status.net, and siptosip.net
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe general framework called "free addressing" is outlined as a blog post at http://e-caller.com/2010/11/the-power-of-free-addressing/
great article
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisone of the (few) things i like about the obama administration is their support for net neutrality (but, they don't seem to be making "real" progress along that front unfortunately)
one concern i have with this article is balancing the individual's right to liberty on the internet with business' rights and people's ability to profit -- *both* need to be considered and both interests must be balanced ("profit" is NOT a bad word - EVERYTHING i do i consider the cost to me vs how it benefits me ---- and also, what are "evil" corporations composed of anyway besides "individuals" - ??)
at any rate, very good article
and in the end, i tend to side w/ the individual rather than corp.s or govts --- better safe than sorry
If "the web is a pubic resource" who donates the $50B+ in annual CapEx? We (and Cisco) owe him a big thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRights are conferred by governments and businesses. The latter must abide with the former, but the right to pay a flat fee and expect to consume anything you wish is not God-given. Who polices China? Who polices Comcast? Who restricts Hulu content in foreign countries - the consumers initially and the government ultimately.
The concept that Sir Tim says was demonstrated in 1990 on his computer — “that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere” — had been demonstrated well before, for example by the service finger, with the files .plan and .profile.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe initial innovation of the Web was simply to combine the idea of finger with a sort of hypertext, and support for graphics beyond ASCII art.
Certainly that combination got more people excited about “shar[ing] information with anyone else anywhere” than had finger (or other such implements), which excitement fueled the evolution of the such sharing. But let's not pretend that the core idea sprang from Sir Tim.
Note that the Wisdom of the Language ( http://news.english.net.in/wisdom-of-the-language ) provides much information that is alluded to with the phrase "semantic web" -- e.g. homes.com is a commercial search engine for homes, cars.com is a commercial search engine for cars, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this:) nmw
Thanks for an excellent and timely article! One thing about Net Neutrality nags at me. If many wireless customers in my vicinity are entertaining themselves with a trending video, it may slow my search of job listings to an unusable crawl. What's fair in this case? I think the case can be made for charging a premium for video. I think policy will need to adapt because wireless spectrum is limited.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell written and insightful. Given the range of issues covered there are gaps but I know they are being debated and discussed. Our digital footprints/ data are important and valuable, and ownership of this class of data is the next battleground for web companies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe web will, I expect, continue to flip between silo's (portals and destinations in old currency) and open as it evolves and grows. I remain concerned about rights, privacy and liberty during these flips, but again take comfort from the many bodies that fight to maintain our rights.
There is a real pressure to find new commercial models from the exploitation of data that creates value from the analysis of the (your) data. I would contend that it is our interpretations of what the terms "public/open" and "private/closed" mean , which is frustrating the debate moving forward. Would Aristotle use Facebook? The post explores this idea that private lives between two extremes of public, one gen X/y grew up with and one that the social gen (millennium babies) users understand. Our rules and regulations are however biased towards to older school.
http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com/would-aristotle-use-facebook
Tony Fish (The author one)
Rights are conferred by governments? Not in the USA buddy. Our government here exists to protect our rights, not grant them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's not conflate the web with web sites, networking with networks. As the author notes, Facebook and such sites add value to the web. Comcast adds value to the web. On-line medical records add value to the web. Should I have access to the author's medical data? When you do your taxes "on line", should I have access to your tax data? If I don't subscribe to Comcast, should I have access to all the content Comcast makes available? The answer to all these questions is obviously "no".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen a company like Verizon or another ISP spends billions of dollars to build an infrastructure, the infrastructure they build is theirs to do with as they please. As a customer, if I don't like that approach, I am free to choose another provider. Will this author raise and spend the billions needed to provide the 'net neutral service many think should exist? Would the internet be anything close to what it has become without all the private investment that has taken place? I think the answer is obvious.
Now let's all show up at his door tomorrow and insist that we have access to his computer, his home and all of his resources. Don't lock your doors buddy. That would be violating our rights.
RDH, while you're right about rights (in the US, the government protects rights, it does not confer them), you have created a straw man argument in this comment. Just think about prior technology--the landline telephone system or the old telegraph system. Both infrastructures were created by private companies, but they do not have the right to do whatever they want with that infrastructure. For example, they cannot refuse to sell phones to groups they disagree with (a 19th century concept of the common carrier status took care of this) and they cannot listen in on our telephone calls without a warrant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey were also not required to put a telephone in everyone's home.
Spot on - commercial use does not have higher rights or authority. However, I obviously sit on one side of the debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@RDH: I think you may be working from a different definition of net neutrality than most. If I put content on the web independently of any third party (e.g. YouTube, facebook, etc.), I get to control who can access that content either server-side through file access privileges or client-side through subscriptions, user accounts, etc. That has never really been debated, and I don't think many (if any) net neutrality proponents have a problem with that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe net neutrality that most are fighting for (and Sir Tim advocates for) is fundamentally different. In essence, net neutrality says that if I make web content publicly available, no third party (ISPs, the government, etc.) should get to choose how or to whom that content is delivered. As argued in this article, such "gatekeeping" undermines both the values and the value of the Web.
As for infrastructure, obviously what this article (and again, most proponents of net neutrality) argues is not that service on that infrastructure be provided for free, but that providers do not have the right to discriminate who gets to have access to their service under fair use. Obviously, there is much debate over what constitutes "fair use", but the central principle is equivalent to Constitutional principles of equal rights and protections under the law.
@RDH
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you've missed the point with the article. Taking the argument for Net Neutrality and perverting it to saying it is equivalent to having everything unlocked and open all the time is disingenuous.
Does the idea that your very world view, what you can access on the web or how you would be discriminated against if people knew what you accessed, not scare you? This is the point that Sir Bernes was trying to share with us.
What Comcast and the other ISPs do around altering the traffic would be akin to the electric company charing you more for the electricity they sold you if you used certain brand of toaster/tv/fridge...ISPs should be thought of like the phone company or electric company, they are now part of the infrastructure and should be regulated against abusing their position. Just because they built the wires doesn't mean they should be able to do whatever they want with them. Nobody is saying they can't earn a profit (they have healthy ones, by the way), just that they should not be able to take their power over us. They should empower us to innovate instead.
Thanks to Scientific American and Sir Tim for an excellent article. Indeed this is a modern version of the enclosure movement. For links to current legislation (COICA) sponsored by Senatory Leahy and additional background on the Verizon/Google proposal and its inherent threat to free speech, readers may be interested in following these links: http://tradewithdave.com/?p=2611
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat, important article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne confusion to clarify in the world -- charging more for more bandwidth does not violate neutrality, it's a different issue. At least, it should be a different issue.
That said, there is a good case for a fixed monthly rate when possible. Lots of quarrels in lots of households will be avoided is the kid isn't costing the family money by being online. Even if the kid's use only costs pennies, usually the parents won't know that.
Consider this compromise: charge more for the top 1% or 2% of bandwidth users. Simply see where the problem begins with the few people using huge amounts, and set the beginning of charge-for-more-usage there. And it's important to give customers a usage-meter app so they can see if they are getting close to that line, and why. Maybe malware is using lots of bandwidth, without the customer knowing anything about it.
Also, video should be considered normal use. The U.S. is far below par in broadband speed and pricing -- which hurts our nation and our future. Meanwhile, lots of "dark fiber" goes unused; and phones need less bandwidth for video, due to fewer pixels on small screens.
Corporations can profit from scarcity, and may create it for that purpose. But when they do, the public and the country get hurt.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of the www. While looking longingly into the distant present, by way of my rose colored shades. I see no poverty nor homelessness that gets in the way of my pursuit of my happiness and my standards. In the land of the free (Internet) and the home of the providers, time has no Warner as I see into the distant verizon. In the social pool, where all Internet providers are created equal, we all hold hands and sing the body electric. In the battle to safe our way of life against the alien horde, hell bent via envy and still stuck on dial up, want to destroy my rights, my Internet right, my right to be human. I dare not stray near babbling brooks with the babbling about civil rights; or civil wrongs. Our Internet rights. Our human rights. Our surfing rights. Our alien rights. I walk through the landscape lit by a million monitors twinkling throughout the night. A nation based in the steady climatic flow of information, where everyone has a PC connection regardless of their economic status of access to electricity in the shelters or in the back alleys. Give me liberty or give me the www.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTim Berners-Lee: I sure hate to see your repeated self promotion as the 'inverntor of the world wide web', for all it implies to the casual modern user of internet technologies, ignoring the significant uncredited contributions of so many others who never heard of you or your unsuccessful little web browser.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the internet and WWW's requirements were already in place when you produced the 'specifications' for the display of linked hypertext.
Having CERN's support of your self promotion, in the interest of their own self promotion, helps, I'm sure.
In my opinion, you should be ashamed.
wonderful article
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissupport for net neutrality
I depend on the web for its openness, easy access, and for my living. The information I upload to the web, I want everyone to have access to it and I do not want the person who comes to my web site attacked(as in arrested or injected with a virus that they will carry back to their computer), snooped on, or restricted (as in not being allowed to view my material or purchase it) by a government, company, or individual...I want to have the right to protect my information from piracy and the information I provide to my customer protected from piracy as they carry their purchase home. I think this is what the internet was intended to do and I will fight to maintain those rights and try my best to eliminate governments, companies, and individuals who want to take those rights away from me and my customers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you SciAm for a well written article.
Cue Gandalf and The Fellowship of the Ring!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour response and a number that follow reveal one of the extra ordinary powers of an open web, if someone writes, "rights are conferred by government," the response for citizens of the US, at least, is wait a minute. The author is simply mistaken and the correct position is brought to the light of day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am all for ISPs monitoring usage and charging more for those that are heavy users. Either that, or they should make sure that all users can enjoy appropriate speed that they signed up for. Many times my connection is poor - could be because more people are on or that some are connecting to large files or other downloads.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it just that ISP providers haven't upgraded their equipment?
Just like torrents started out as the decentralized versions of centralized music industry, the whole setup of the Internet needs to be reconfigured as a decentralized organization. The Internet as we know it is just a matter of conventions. Would it be possible with other software (and hardware settings) to setup a shadow Internet? Could wireless routers be programmed so that they send information to each other instead of to a provider? If so, then technically it could be possible to have a decentralized Internet without the need for local providers. This is making the Internet really universal. HAM radio Internet already does this in Africa, albeit perhaps slowly. Just a "bit" of C-coding. So who is starting to write the software?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately, there are a number of factual errors in this essay which undermine its credibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFacebook, LinkedIn and Friendster all offer free APIs that let third parties create tools and sites that retrieve user data (subject to the permission schemes). Through these APIs, every piece of user data is given a URI. Here's the documentation for Facebook's API: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api
iTunes lets you copy a link to any page in the store and send it to anyone else. The resultant link begins with "http:" and can be opened in any web browser, without the need for iTunes. For example, here's a link for the Beatles' White Album: http://itunes.apple.com/au/album/the-beatles-white-album/id401126224
Rather than closed silos, to me these seem to be perfect examples of the "semantic web" concept that Sir Berners-Lee has been pursuing for the last decade.
As language translating software is perfected, and interactive multimedia are utilized, we will see a quantum jump in the "idea combinations" of mankind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEducation is going online in a big way. Not just to save money (big empty buildings), But to take advantage of the best teachers and teaching methods. Children from around the world will soon be communicating with each other (via multimedia) as if they were in the next room. It will be fun trying to make them all understand at once, the boundries that their parents built.
Libraries have had the ability to go online for years, not just for those with disabilities, but for any interested party. Medical science has already begun taking advantage of "open online interactive symposiums" to create better treatment methods.
As the scientific community further breaks down walls of open discussion, better ideas will result.
The quantum leaps in technology will be difficult for the political communities to absorb, as they will knock down idealogical boundries daily.
The internet crosses borders with ideas and communication forms in a way that history has never seen before. Entities that had formerly controlled with political and economical clout may find it more difficult to hold their ground.
"Freedom" may take on a new meaning, as the best universities of the world are allowed to openly share (via multimedia) their valuable "teaching" at a very low cost.
While our magnanimous benefactors are promoting open access to all internet content, I for one will be looking forward to free access all nature.com resources without paying $199 for an annual site subscription and all science.com resources without paying $99 for an annual membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Please let me know when access to these and other scientific sites are freely available.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreatest drawback of websites are they are too much.When I first opened my website on Internet there were few website. At that time I received many email every day about my website but as tempo of website accelerated my website lost in jumble.I did not received a single email month after month.On web everybody speaking very loudly but no one listening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I understand, early on search engines ordered search results based on page relevance: the number of instances of the target text found on each page. Later, various methods were used to order search results. As I understand, Google popularly (pun) returned documents that contained the target text ordered by the popularity of the site. This means that potentially less relevant documents on more popular sites are more likely to be referenced as a result of web searches. This method is quite often very effective for the causal purposes of most web users, but produces a self-sustainment of web site popularity. Web sites that gain some initial notoriety are more likely to become more popular in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuite likely, quality sites maintained by individuals or small groups are less capable of manipulating user accesses by playing the highly competitive website rating game, losing out to sites with better funding of support services.
Well, I assume I'm biased: I love email. Thus my worries when someone messages me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or whatever closed social networking environment I'm subscribed, and then get very angry because I didn't reply to them, because it's physically impossible for me to constantly check on all those systems to see if someone is waiting for an answer from me... although in some cases I might get an email "notice" to log in to the site and read the message.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that the temptation of "reinventing the wheel" is too great for companies to try to get users use their service instead of everybody else's. We might have the Internet for 41 years now, and an universal email protocol for at least 38 years, but corporate culture is still based on the notion that "the biggest provider will mandate how people use technology". It's incredible how even after almost four decades they haven't learned a different business approach.
I'm personally scared of some initiatives where governments accept Facebook messages as official notifications from courts or to file tax claims, instead of email or Web-based forms. One day, Zuckerberg will effectively run governments for his personal benefit. And everybody will be out there applauding the change.
I know I'm being dramatic, but to fight this trend, it takes some shaking up like this article. Nice work, Tim!... I mean Sir Berners-Lee. Gosh, we definitely have come a long way since the early USENET alt.culture.www group and similar ones :)
Before 10 years ago i was thing Google is offering all answers for my all questions. Day by day my requirements changed and now we are looking for information with more details, we would like to discuss with people and social media sites giving us opportunity to do effective communication.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWikipedia helping people to know more and more subjects and topics and similarly various new things also coming.
I think its all depends on Use value and exchange value. If you take a example of Facebook then its use value is so high people like that service.
So now it will world will decide after 10 years that if something new arrive that time people will decide what to use and not to use.
This post was #6 on RTs on twitter with tag science: http://emergent-hive.com/2010/12/top-posts-in-science-according-to-twitter-user-rts-beta/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis post was #1 on RTs on twitter with tag science: http://emergent-hive.com/2010/12/top-posts-in-science-according-to-twitter-user-rts-beta/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur communities illuminated
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisamongst social knotworks promulgated
the intertwinings not yours to re roll
you seize a loop, them sees a control
Corporations are gollums steeped of you
vampires drinking the light swirled suave too
knolls name (whom is owned) no two names no
bid data higher as trademarked memos
we awaken stirred by the night cites plight
to wander off with our candle aflame
to out of style's reborn who knows of fame
websites, texts, we make our own face books
pulling this dark firing into twilight
the unity of our suns bursts into all sights
---
~open_neutrality: http://u.tgu.ca/open_neutrality
This is a very interesting topic. A balance of Web openness as well as privacy of the users must be maintained, or else the internet usage will be greatly diminished. However, ordinary civil rights are violated more and more on a daily basis because of corruption and no accountability of those who abuse power, this is likely to be even worse on the internet. If we invite more regulation we will undoubtedly invite more abuse of those powers because of the inherent fact that those who govern are not under the same scrutiny of the law of those being governed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe great thing about the internet is the unlimited plethora of information and knowledge that is shared and the ability to network with others at virtually the speed of light and even the cooperation of projects that are organized and completed is amazing. I think, and at the least, I hope that people will defend such a wonderful tool without the stated discriminations. - Herbalman (Webmaster of http://www.herbsnthings.net/ )
Social networking based on semantic web ideas may lead the way out of centralized social networking "sites". One idea that is being tried out for networking people in the context of Web content reaching the semi-literate masses (who soon will have Internet on their mobiles) is Alipi. This can also be a basis for catering to more generalized networking needs. Ref: http://j.mp/alipi2011 and alipi.janastu.org
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistechnology--the landline telephone system or the old telegraph system. Both <a href="http://www.igamingpromos.com">infrastructures</a> were created by private companies, but they do not have the right to do whatever they want with that infrastructure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInternet is the biggest challenge to Governement systems and the way they control everything from business, free speech, content, piracy and human rights. By having no borders, it challenges all the old style government concepts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe the internet will force us to think of new ways that they can govern and control - this includes all types of countries, from the USA to China.
Lior
Dear Mr Lee
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCongratulations on your article. It is very important, even after nearly three years after it was written.
Today (30.12.2012) in Brazil in Congress are discussing the concept of net neutrality. Just as with a serious distortion: No one talks about neutrality as a principle to be respected also by service providers, but only by so-called ISPs.
I briefly caveat to the point that your article refers to company FORM. Nothing it does is different from common practices also made by providers like Google or Facebook. Honestly, I see no difference, from the perspective of the user of the internet, if your data will be used by a third party, or directly by the service provider he used.
In this case, the keyword is no longer neutral, and becomes the transparency. What you should not do is let to inform what are their rules of providing service, leaving consumers able to choose whether or not to undergo them, or prefer the services of a competitor ISP.
Another point, as they say in America: There is no free lunch! So when we think of a free Internet, open and free, we can be sure that someone, directly or indirectly paying for it.
In the case of ISPs makes no sense having to invest more in the development of the network if they can not charge more from those who use the internet more.
Applications videos; VOIP services; P2P applications use a large part of the network, whether fixed or mobile and need to be charged differently from other applications that require less structure, such as mail delivery, or visit a Web site of any web.
The net is finite and scarce resources need to be managed by one basic rule: Who uses more, pay more. The other alternative is worse for everyone: While many have to pay for excessive use of few.
Ah, the internet is in no more danger than the <a href="http://forsalemidland.com/">houses for sale in Midland TX</a>, and if it were you can bet there would be plenty of people coming to it's aid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this