"When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free. Today, the British computer scientist's creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended. In Australia to promote his book, This is for Everyone, Berners-Lee is reflecting on what his invention has become and how he and a community of collaborators can put the power of the web back into the hands of its users."
"Technology isn't neutral Berners-Lee traces the first corruption of the web to the commercialisation of the domain name system, which he believes would have served web users better had it been managed by a nonprofit in the public interest. Instead, he says, in the 1990s the .com space was pounced on by charlatans. The Americans were very keen about commercialising the internet crossing the boundary from being an academic thing to being a commercial thing, he tells Guardian Australia from Brisbane."
The World Wide Web was invented in 1989 with the intention of being free, universal, and built around users. Commercialisation, beginning with the domain name system and the 1990s .com rush, shifted priorities toward profit and away from nonprofit, public-interest management. That shift enabled design choices that prioritized commercial incentives and contributed to harms that became starkly visible by 2016. A movement of activists and developers seeks to reverse those trends by changing how data is held, decentralising power, and reconstructing the web as a people-centered, public-resource platform.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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