Freedom of press critical, says internet founder
BY EVAN PICKWORTH, 09 JUNE 2013,
Founder of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Picture: www.webfoundation.org
AS THE internet explodes in new markets and across different cultures, the role of a free press and the ability of journalists to sift through masses of new information to find the truth is a very important priority, the founder of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says.
Governments around the world are seeking to gain more control over private information gateways. In South Africa, a controversial secrecy bill has been passed that moves to protect sensitive government information and punish whistleblowers.
Speaking at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards in Monte Carlo on Friday, Mr Berners-Lee cautioned that citizen’s rights and those of service providers needed to be free from government intervention. One of the major risks was for a corrupt government, or a big brother approach, being given control over the internet, he said.
Mr Berners-Lee said there was still a "long way to go to open up databases." He encouraged journalists to push for data from governments and to report the results of this analysis.
He said the shutdown of the internet by the Mubarak regime in Egypt during the protests there — where social media was used to manage the uprising against the dictatorship and usher in a new system — was a serious wake-up call.
"People were asking, so who can turn off my internet? The internet as a neutral medium is important to democracy," he said.
While only around 25% of the world’s population has access to the web at the moment, the major change will be when different cultures and languages, like those in Africa, are added and when "only" 80% of the world’s population accesses the net, said Mr Berners-Lee.
The internet founder is championing a multi-stakeholder system to control the net, with government as one of the stakeholders. He proposes the system be managed at arm’s length from government.
Mr Berners-Lee expressed his excitement about opportunities for web-based applications that can be used on mobile and other more devices and the use of open web platforms, where the same web technology can be used by different developers.
The journalism of the future "may not look like the journalism of today", he said he, adding that he believed journalists would soon need to filter through more information as more and more information became available to citizens.
"I don’t see very effective systems sorting this out apart from human beings doing the jobs as journalists. There will be some very interesting websites," he said.
The Web Foundation he helped form in 2007 believes that Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives in low- and middle-income countries can have a positive impact on their future socioeconomic and political development. For that, these initiatives should focus on releasing information that matters to improve people’s lives and the society at large, ideally leading to achieve the Open Government paradigm shift where citizens are better informed and more directly involved in political decision-making.
It has already conducted an OGD readiness assessment in two countries — Chile and Ghana — as well as a subsequent implementation of the Ghana Open Data Initiative (Godi).
Mr Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working as a software engineer at CERN, the large particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. He built his first computer from a television.
