Tim Berners-Lee on Blogging And The Web 226
neiljt writes "The BBC2 is to air an interview by Marc Lawson with Tim Berners-Lee this evening, where TBL offers his thoughts on the Read/Write web. A transcript of the interview is available from BBC News." From the article: "I feel that we need to individually work on putting good things on [the web], finding ways to protect ourselves from accidentally finding the bad stuff, and that at the end of the day, a lot of the problems of bad information out there, things that you don't like, are problems with humanity.
This is humanity which is communicating over the web, just as it's communicating over so many other different media. I think it's a more complicated question we have to; first of all, make it a universal medium, and secondly we have to work to make sure that that it supports the sort of society that we want to build on top of it. "
Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you mean "we"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"We" are doing that, certainly, but "we" don't all agree on what sort of society "we" want to build on top of it.
In other words (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't mean for this to be a troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
Brilliant!
(Un)Fortunately we have a little thing called free speech, which can be a double-edged sword (hence the 'Un'). I can find information 99.99% of the time that I'm looking for, but I also get shoved head-first sometimes into piles and piles of unwanted banners, popups, spam, spyware, etc.
More good, less suck. I think we should run with that!
Re:the Read/Write web? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're posting on it.
Amen! (Score:5, Insightful)
Humanity (Score:3, Insightful)
Not exactly the most reassuring thing I've read all week... but it's only Tuesday, so maybe there's still hope.
He likes "blogs" (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting perspective there coming from the creator of the WWW itself. Especially so because of the contrary opinion that I and a number of techie people (on and off Slashdot) hold - about "blogs" merely being the ancient idea of personal webpages that have been around for 2 decades, and which is being recycled/marketed as a hep "in" idea in the past few years.
I've always thought of "blogs" being a overhyped concept that the PHBs (recall "corporate blogs") and Joe Sixpack are discovering as a kewl thing you can do with teh Intarweb.
And here comes Sir TBL himself and claims that blogs are closer to what he imagined the original WWW to be. And when he puts it like that, I sorta agree with him - I'd rather have people more personal content on there (not talking about the typical immature blog-kiddie's OMG I'm so cool) rather than have it turn into a marketing/services too used mostly for providing business services (car rentals, flight reservations).
If blogs are what make using the WWW easier, more interesting and useful, then I'm willing to drop the whole (Blog = Overhyped Personal Webpage) argument.
Re:What Question would you have asked Sir TBL? (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyway, I always have a good solution to these people. It always results in anger and laughter.
Take a look! [blogs.com]. Obviously the most attention this self-important asstard will ever get. He should thank me.
Re:What the fuck is this? (Score:3, Insightful)
and secondly we have to work to make sure that that it supports the sort of society that we want to build on top of it.
This is a complete non-statement, of the sort that you'd be smacked for writing in an english class. The internet supports everything that is built on top of it. This includes the right society and the wrong society alike. This is like saying the earth has to support the sort of cities that we want to build on top of it.
Simply put, it does. It is incapable of doing anything else.
Re:Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ay, there's the rub! (Score:3, Insightful)
And just who is "we" then?
And just what "sort" of society "we" want to build?
Dictators throughout history have been trying to dictate society for thousands of years and still no one has got it right" (If there is such a thing).
As far as the internet goes, we either leave it open and let it reflect all that is glorious and all that is reprehensible about the human condition, or we form our "perfect", lowest common denominator, society that is such a narrow slice of humanity that it becomes completely useless to all.
OR
We do what we've been doing and leave it open but try to police the very worst of it as best we can. Realizing of course that there is no universal truths as to what is "worst" vs "tolerable" vs "necessary".
This is a hard thing to do and it should be hard and it should require continuous debate. But when I hear words like "the sort of society that we want to build" I get a cold chill and I don't even have to know or care who is saying them.
Re:Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who says that you need to resort to the opinions of others to decide what's good or bad? Why not train your browser (or search engine or whatever) like you train your spam filter so that it can build up a pretty good idea of what *you* think is bad?
Re:Don't mean for this to be a troll... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best thing about the web is that it allows anyone to publish.
The worst thing about the web is that it allows anyone to publish.
Re:He likes "blogs" (Score:4, Insightful)
For a while, you had to host your own server or be proficient in markup to get stuff onto the web, and things were looking very corporate.
What TBL originally had in mind was a read/write medium, and he's happy to see that the ability to write is catching up.
Re:the Read/Write web? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The road to sollipsism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but in Fahrenheit 451 the firemen went around burning other people's books, not just their own.
If you're solipsistic in your reading, regardless on the medium, you do so in order to become a "contented consumer" and it costs you your humanity.
And that is a tragedy - one which we see all around us because the vast majority of people do go through life with blinders on. But insisting that they must open their eyes is as wrong as them insisting that we must be fitted for their blinders and even more hopeless. After all, none is as blind as the man who will not see.
Re:What Question would you have asked Sir TBL? (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly, the Web has turned into its own viable organism, and I seem to hear a lot of people tracing back to Berners-Lee (or Al Gore, depending on who you believe) as the person responsible for dirty pictures on their son's computer (Mom, if you're reading this, I swear that picture of the lady and the horse just appeared on my screen).
I do wish someone who gets some time with someone like Tim Berners-Lee would ask MORE questions (or followup questions) on the "web in 30 years" philosophical/futurist front (after all, they have access to the mind of the person who started the ball rolling) and fewer repetitive questions about the lurid underbelly of humanity, which is really all that the "bad" sites are reflecting.
It just seems ironic and pointless to waste as many lines on that particular Web page asking the father of the Web whether he feels responsible for the other dirty Web pages out there.
Re:He likes "blogs" (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad stuff = not actually related (Score:2, Insightful)
TBL is unrealistic in this regard, as the "bad stuff" can only go away only when I have a trained AI doing my searches for me, and automatically filtering out the results that aren't pr0n.
"Bad" information (Score:1, Insightful)
I've always felt the issue of "bad" information (or "bad stuff" in general) on the web was not as terrible a thing as people make it out to be. As Berners-Lee says, that is just the result of people communicating. For every good idea out there, there are a thousand or a million that are pure crap. That's the way it always has been and always will be, no matter what the medium. And attempts to filter and/or censor the crap can possibly even be harmful, because it will produce a generation of people with no critical thinking skills and non-functioning B.S. detectors -- people who expect "good" information to be nicely packaged and channeled to them by Those Who Know Better. Which, of course, is exactly the kind of populace that any authority structure wants to have.
Re:He likes "blogs" (Score:3, Insightful)
It allows for incredible things to be done - real-time monitoring of the entire internet for anybody writing anything on a particular topic or keyword being one example. It's no longer necessary to have a search provider (i.e. Google) crawl the web periodically and only be able to get updates on the current state of the net weekly or monthly or whatever. As soon as a post is written on a blog on, say, the shuttle landing, services such as Technorati [technorati.com] notice it, and you can be notified of this post the next time your aggregator updates your "shuttle" search feed
So it's not the individual blog that's interesting - most of them (like most of everything) are crap. It's the aggregated state of all the blogs that's interesting. It's being able to tell what's on millions of people's minds at this very instant. It makes the web a much more real-time medium.
But TBL is right - what makes all this work is the fact that blogging software is simple enough for somebody with little or no knowledge of HTML to be able to post and be an equal participant in the "blogosphere."
Re:He likes "blogs" (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why that's so incredibly important. Furthermore this is to a large degree a derivate of whatever CNN/AP/MTV, and now, ImportantBlog, decides is important. So to know what's on "millions of people's minds" I might just as well read a paper.
Summary of article: (Score:4, Insightful)
TBL: No.
Re:The junk is hard to avoid (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like saying everything's a "car", when there are sedans, coupes, minivans, SUVs, etc. The range of sites that fall under the category "blog" is a deficiency in vocabulary, but calling everything a "website" is far worse.
Second thing: You pointed out a couple of sites out of how many hundreds of millions of personal sites? For every one valuable thriving community site that stands above the crowd and represents the rare cream, I can show you half a million live journals, a hundred thousand blogger journals and a few hundred thousand personal traditional websites.
Exactly. Welcome to the topic.
Blogs remove the difficulty of entry, yet again. Imagine how much more crappy television would be (unthinkable, I know) if the barrier for entry was "you have to have a pulse and a camera" and any drivel you could think of putting together would automatically be accepted, produced and broadcast?!
No, because "accepted" doesn't apply. If there were unlimited, free channels available on cable, then we could have a similar situation. Then we could have a discussion about how to identify the stations that are worthwhile. And you know what? That would be pretty cool, and I'm sure there would be plenty of worthwhile sites created. But again, the question of filtering the content is important.
And I don't buy it when people excuse their personal blog by saying "oh, it's just for me and my family" or "it's just for me and my friends". First - if that's true, then why is it open to the public? And regardless of that, why can't you pick up the phone and talk to your friends and family? I mean, presuming they aren't in the same city you are.
Have you ever tried reading a URL over a phone? Blogs allow us to share things over the web that simply aren't that easy with other media. And some blogs do have the ability to restrict access. The fact that some people haven't elected to use those restrictions reflects ignorance or laziness more than ego -- I think you've made quite an incorrect assumption in that regard.
Nobody said every blog was shit. Just the enormous majority. Maybe five nines. And that just goes to prove the entire point both myself (and TBL) have offered. There is too much crap. And, worse, the crap is ENCOURAGED. After all, do you think Google or Live Journal cares if your blog has any real content? No. They just care that you're another account and that you'll link to some friends and you'll generate more eyeballs amongst yourselves.
Wow! Companies encourage people to use their products! I'm shocked!
Yes, there a lot of blogs. Most are not of interest to me. That's why we need intelligent searching and filtering mechanisms. That should be our focus, not complaining that people are talking about things we don't care about (after all, they will always continue to do so, through whichever means are available).
Something about "grey goo" fits in somewhere here.
Well, I'm glad some people are using their grey goo to talk about solutions rather than problems...
Re:Ay, there's the rub! (Score:4, Insightful)
Any group of like-minded people.
And just what "sort" of society "we" want to build?
Whatever sort they want it to be.
The net, more than anything in meatspace, enables specific communities to develop as connected to, or as indepent of, any other community on the net.
They can range from the extremely insular to the extremely open and they can all do it however they want without having to dictate how other communities ought to organize and behave.
You want to be a car-freak? Fine, lots of places on the net. You want to be ferrari snob, fine there is a place for you too. You want to be hong-kong rom-com movie fanatic? Lots of places for you too. Whatever floats your boat, you can find or build a group of like-minded people on the net and you don't have to step on anyone else's group to do so.
Re:What Question would you have asked Sir TBL? (Score:3, Insightful)
You answer your own question st stating "TBL is a computer scientist who saw interesting possibilities in a new technique called hypertext."
If anyone is going to comment on something being useful or not, then surely that's someone who has domonstrated an ability in the past to understand where a concept will/should lead, and what it is like to be at the fore-front of a technological tsunami.
You could say no one knows, and that the internet type system is so widely spread now that no single person would have a hope in understading where it would lead. You could say that someone is always biased to promote their own ideas/personal ideologies. I would agree with both of these critiques, but I would say, if one person has proved themself as a seminal, insightful, big picture personality, that really understands the web, then TBL is that person.
Re:What the fuck is this? (Score:3, Insightful)