This story breaks my heart. The great Tim Bernes-Lee (no, this current iteration won’t reduce the past versions) has left us, metaphorically, in spirit, in liberal spirit, at least. The Guardian has titled a story “Tim….unveils global plan to save the web,” but then reveals a plan by Tim to not SAVE the web, but finish it off once and for all.
Tim has decided that danger is worth killing for, though, of course, he won’t see it that way because he must not, surely, understand what powers he is giving to institutions that have the power of lethal enforcement at their disposal. Tim trusts the state, not the people, for he fears their danger, their ignorance, their lack of conforming to the morality, to the way that Tim and his small coterie of protected ether-builders in ether cathedrals have mathematically and morally worked out will benefit us all.
To that end, Tim wants a Contract for the web that DEMANDS, among other things, that the state, all states, in all forms, PROTECT humanity from the dangers of bad ideas, bad words. Tim is the man that gave you HTML, the code that essentially made the web navigable, made web pages more or less possible. 1994 Tim believed in his neighbors, and, like a form of Prometheus, he gave his gift of digital fire to the world.
But, unlike Prometheus, he turned back from his work, and now he is seeking to have that fire returned, but not to him, to the state, to the corpostate. He wants to take that power out of the hands of the poors and placed firmly in the hands of the billionaires, for the good of the whole.
I wonder whether he’s figured out the role he’s really playing in this morality play. There are no halos needed for your costume, sir, trust me.
Tim Berners-Lee unveils global plan to save the web – The Guardian
Excerpt:
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global action plan to save the web from political manipulation, fake news, privacy violations and other malign forces that threaten to plunge the world into a “digital dystopia”.
The Contract for the Web requires endorsing governments, companies and individuals to make concrete commitments to protect the web from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity.
“I think people’s fear of bad things happening on the internet is becoming, justifiably, greater and greater,” Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, told the Guardian. “If we leave the web as it is, there’s a very large number of things that will go wrong. We could end up with a digital dystopia if we don’t turn things around. It’s not that we need a 10-year plan for the web, we need to turn the web around now.”
News Link Sourced by WireWatch.News
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