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Post: Big Brother IS Watching YouPosted by Deborah on 10/02/08
Warning sounded on web's future
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour
from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.
Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was
increasingly worried about the way the web has been used
to spread disinformation.
Sir Tim spoke prior to the unveiling of a Foundation he
has co-created that aims to make the web truly worldwide.
It will look at ways to get the web into mobiles and into
nations where net use is languishing.
Future proof
Sir Tim talked to the BBC in the week in which Cern, where
he did his pioneering work on the web, turned on the Large
Hadron Collider for the first time.
The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the
switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could
swallow up the Earth particularly concerned him, he said.
In a similar vein was the spread of rumours that the MMR
vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful.
Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems
that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once
they had been proved reliable sources.
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly
and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep
personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very
believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of
sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of
people and being deeply damaging."
Sir Tim and colleagues at the World Wide Web consortium
had looked at simple ways of branding websites - but
concluded that a whole variety of different mechanisms was
needed.
"I'm not a fan of giving a website a simple number like an
IQ rating because like people they can vary in all kinds
of different ways," he said. "So I'd be interested in
different organisations labelling websites in different
ways".
Sir Tim spoke to the BBC to publicise the launch of his
World Wide Web Foundation which aims to improve the web's
accessibility.
Alongside this role it will aim to make it easier for
people to get online. Currently only 20% of the world's
population have access to the web
"Has it been designed by the West for the West?" asked Sir
Tim.
"Has it been designed for the executive and the teenager
in the modern city with a smart phone in their pocket? If
you are in a rural community do you need a different kind
of web with different kinds of facilities?"
entire article here,
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-
/2/hi/technology/7613201.stm
Posts on this thread, including this one
Big Brother IS Watching You, 10/02/08, by Deborah.
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