#web30: The world wide web at 30 years old

We owe a lot to Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the 30th Anniversary of the web.

Tim Berners-Lee helped invent the world wide web 30 years ago. And he has consistently pointed out that the original dream that gave rise to it is under threat.

It is exactly 30 years since Sir Tim submitted a paper to his colleagues at CERN, suggesting a way of sharing data across networks, under the title “Information Management: A Proposal”. The humble title belies the importance of what was contained inside, which included a complete sketch for the networked information system that would on to become the internet we know today.

But its really important to think about the next 30 years.

Surveillance capitalism and governmental/state control are hot topics which very much threaten the fabric of the web. But so does our use of the web and the way we treat each other.

I had a really good 10min talk with Sir Tim Berners-Lee during the last Mozilla Festival, while talking about Solid, Databox and data trust. What got me as we talked, was ultimately we were talking about power and where it lies. Power in the hands of governments (Chinese model) , corporations (American model) or people? (could be the European model?)

I think remembering their are humans, not eyeballs, not lefties/rightwingers, etc is so important. Lets celebrate the people of the web!

https://twitter.com/whynotadoc/status/1105400124447039489

Geek and Geekhag podcast number six – semantic what?

My and Sarah's sixth podcast is now available online. Enjoy and please leave a comment if you've enjoyed it or simply hate it.

This time we reflect on a few blog posts from me and Sarah's personal blogs. And I attempt to do a short introducation to the semantic web and tagging vs categories.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Tim Berners-Lee Semantic web lecture

Tim Berners Lee in Oxford

After the mad panic trying to get the train up to Oxford due to the Trainline machine at work not working. We arrived at the Oxford University venue well before the start time and picked a great spot for the lecture. Tim Berners-Lee was good to see live, you could see he certainly was no Steve Jobs. He was more like Bill Gates, a little uneasy with public talking but happy to talk about his vision and his work towards that vision. That vision is the Semantic Web. Rather than me explain every aspect of the talk its best I point you towards Tim's S5 presentation, a webcast (coming soon), this blog and my notes. I've also added my photos from the lecture to Flickr.

So generally I'm even more sure that the semantic web is happening but within certain domains. Will the semantic web happen across the web, doubtful at best. Recent developments in web 2.0 have really pushed the web towards a more richer smeantic web but away from top down ontologies and rules.

Oh and believe it or not, me and Miles were quoted in the Newstatesman blog

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]