jjprojects: our social web

In a comprehensive new article, Tim Berners–Lee calls for vigilance in maintaining open web standards and neutrality. He asserts that the egalitarian principles the web was founded on 2o years ago, are being threatened in different ways by “some of its most successful inhabitants”. He criticizes the likes of Facebook, Apple, Google, Verizon, some ISPs, even Twitter and Linkedin for various dubious and potentially dubious activities.

He asserts that the walling off of information from the rest of the web by large social networks (such as Facebook) threatens the web’s established universality and decentralization. He points out that large social networks such and Twitter and Linkedin capture users’ (voluntarily offered) data and assemble excellent databases, and then reuse this information to provide a value added service. However, this only happens within their walls, which segments off information and threatens the decentralized nature of the Web. Once we enter our data into one of these networks, it can’t easily be used by us on another site or network. The pages are on the web, but the data are not.

Not such a big deal you say? The stated threat is that the more this kind of structure spreads, the more the web becomes fragmented and the less it becomes a universally accessible information space. Another threat is that any one social network, search engine or web browser could get big and powerful enough to become a monopoly; of course Google and increasingly Facebook spring to mind here.

He also points out that some cable tv companies that provide connectivity are considering the possibility of limiting users to only their content mix. Some wireless internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites which have not made deals with them, and governments both totalitarian and democratic, are monitoring people’s online habits, infringing human rights. My previous post, A year in a labour camp for one retweet!, is a shocking example of these very activities in action.

In terms of lack of openness and centralization, he singles out Apple’s iTunes system, which uses the proprietary “itunes” instead of the standard “http” to locate content. You can only access iTunes using Apple’s propietary iTunes application. You are no longer on the web, it’s walled off. It’s a single shop rather than an open marketplace, controlled by one large company. On a related side note, only today I was looking around for a particular audio book. It turned out that it was $32.99 on iTunes, and $10.47 elsewhere, for the same book.

Yet another development he finds disturbing because it’s off the web, is magazines and newspapers (for example) starting to create smartphone–only apps rather than web apps. You can’t bookmark pages within them or email a page link within an app. You can’t tweet out a page link from an app, without others having the app. He believes it’s better to build web apps that run on smartphone browsers. This may not seem like such a big deal, but if it turns out that one company, one walled garden, has too tight of a hold on the market, it could slow innovation, or worse.

Berners–Lee maintains that if these and other trends continue unchecked, the Web could be “broken into fragmented islands”. The freedom to connect to whichever sites we want could be lost, and this will extend to mobiles devices too. He points out that the web is a critical democracy, one that “makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation.” This could become more fragmented.

There is real food for thought in this article and I encourage you to read the whole thing, as I’ve only touched on some of the issues he mentions. It’s really worth reading when you have time. He makes some excellent points in relation to why we should care about all this. The web is ours. It’s a public resource on which we are coming to depend on more and more, for so many things.

Should we let the web become fragmented, and monopolized by a few big and powerful companies? Should we let governments chip away at our liberty by monitoring and filtering? Do we even have any power to stop these things happening if we want to?

Take Facebook – many people are aware of the walled-garden nature of Facebook, yet it’s grown to over 500 million users and doesn’t look like slowing down. Facebook is starting to make substantial revenue from its walled garden too. It’s a big company now.

Google has become a huge and profitable company is such a short time. It’s continually expanding its operations into new areas with some astonishing technology, while still making the vast majority of its money from advertising. It all seems to unfold before we realize what’s happening and can think of all the possible ramifications. It so often seems to be the case with new technology. We take the good with not so good, because the good seems to outweigh the not so good.

If there are significant dangers, perhaps we are safe in the knowledge that we can collectively change things if we really want to. For instance, at some point, if people decide to leave Facebook en masse, that would be it for Facebook. If Google steps over the line towards the opposite of “Don’t be evil”, we can always stop using Google. If something else that seems better comes along, we’ll start using it. We seem to be fickle like that when it comes to the web.