[ninux-not-wireless] Tim Berners-Lee: we need to re-decentralise the web

[Alessandro Gubitosi]

Articolo estratto da:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-02/06/tim-berners-lee-reclaim-the-web


  Tim Berners-Lee: we need to re-decentralise the web

06 February 14 by Liat Clark
<http://www.wired.co.uk/search/author/Liat+Clark>

Tim Berners-Lee with David Rowan
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-02/06/tim-berners-lee-reclaim-the-web/viewgallery/332234>
Tim Berners-Lee with David RowanChris Woods / chrismwoods.com

Twenty-five years on from the web's inception, its creator has urged the
public to re-engage with its original design: a decentralised internet
that at its very core, remains open to all.

Speaking with Wired editor David Rowan at an event launching the
magazine's March issue
<http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2014/03>, Tim Berners-Lee said
that although part of this is about keeping an eye on for-profit
internet monopolies such as search engines and social networks, the
greatest danger is the emergence of a balkanised web.

"I want a web that's open, works internationally, works as well as
possible and is not nation-based," Berners-Lee told the audience, which
included  Martha Lane Fox
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/17/martha-lane-fox-lords-speech>, 
Jake Davis
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/18/jake-davis-topiary> (AKA
Topiary) and  Lily Cole
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-10/25/lily-cole-impossible>.
He suggested one example to the contrary: "What I don't want is a web
where the  Brazilian government has every social network's data stored
on servers on Brazilian soil
<http://finance.yahoo.com/news/rousseff-wants-servers-housed-brazil-223154730.html>.
That would make it so difficult to set one up."

It's the role of governments, startups and journalists to keep that
conversation at the fore, he added, because the pace of change is not
slowing -- it's going faster than ever before. For his part Berners-Lee
drives the issue through his work at the Open Data Institute, World Wide
Web Consortium and World Wide Web Foundation, but also as an MIT
professor whose students are "building new architectures for the web
where it's decentralised". On the issue of monopolies, Berners-Lee did
say it's concerning to be "reliant on big companies, and one big
server", something that stalls innovation, but that competition has
historically resolved these issues and will continue to do so.

    "It's important to have the geek community as a whole think about
    its responsibility and what it can do"

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

The kind of balkanised web he spoke about, as typified by Brazil's
home-soil servers argument orIran's emerging intranet
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/07/iran-offline>, is
partially being driven by revelations of NSA and GCHQ mass surveillance.
The distrust that it has brewed, from a political level right down to
the threat of self-censorship among ordinary citizens, threatens an open
web and is, said Berners-Lee,  a greater threat than censorship
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/22/web-index-2013>. Knowing
the NSA  may be breaking commercial encryption services
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/03/nsa-quantum-computer> could
result in the emergence of more networks like China's Great Firewall, to
"protect" citizens. This is why we need a bit of anti-establishment push
back, alluded to by Berners-Lee. 

He reiterated the need to  protect whistleblowers
<http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/07/tim-berners-lee-nsa> like Edward
Snowden that leak information only in extreme circumstances "because
they have this role in society". But more than this, he noted the need
for hackers. 

"It's a really important culture, it's important to have the geek
community as a whole think about its responsibility and what it can do.
We need various alternative voices pushing back on conventional
government sometimes." 

In the midst of so much political and social disruption, the man who
changed the course of communication, education, activism and so much
more, and in so many ways, remains dedicated to fighting for a web
founded in freedom and openness. But when asked what he would have done
differently, the answer was easy. "I would have got rid of the slash
slash after the colon. You don't really need it. It just seemed like a
good idea at the time."

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