Prep

Prep

4/ There's no last word on all this, of course, but it is important that people realise how the tools and services we give our trust to — in the form of so much information about ourselves, our friends and networks — work and the kinds of consequences, good, bad and unwanted, that can follow.

Over half-term, this story surfaced: How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did. And you may have heard about the Google tracking story that also broke over half-term: Google admits tracking Safari users. Or you may remember this from last year, Logging out of Facebook is not enough (the Telegraph picked up on this: Facebook criticised for 'tracking' logged-out users).

5/ What kind of web do we want? One where companies can determine what we do and say and see? One where the idea of the open web has been lost and instead we live largely inside a behemoth like Google(+) or Facebook? Here are a few things to think about …

Adrian Short wrote a piece on his blog (at the end of 2011) that was then re-published in the Guardian, Why Facebook's new Open Graph makes us all part of the web underclass:

When you own a domain you're a first class citizen of the web. A householder and landowner. What you can do on your own website is only very broadly constrained by law and convention. … If you use a paid-for web service at someone else's domain you're a tenant. A second class citizen. You don't have much control. You'll probably have to live with your landlord's furniture and decoration and a restrictive set of rules. …

The promise of the open web looks increasingly uncertain. The technology will continue to exist and improve. It looks like you'll be able to run your own web server on your own domain for the foreseeable future. But all the things that matter will be controlled and owned by a very small number of Big Web companies. Your identity will be your accounts at Facebook, Google and Twitter, not the domain name you own. You don't pay Big Web a single penny so it can take away your identity and all your data at any time. The things you can say and do that are likely to be seen and used by any significant number of people will be the things that Facebook, Google and Twitter are happy for you to say and do.

Tim Berners-Lee was interviewed last year by The New Statesman. He spoke about his fears for the openness of the very web and internet themselves, and his fears have relevance to what we've been looking at: 

His greatest fear is that … the web could be killed off by a large company or government. "That is why I campaign for commercial net neutrality," he says. "If large corporations control our access to the internet and determine which websites we can go to, we will lose its openness and its democratic nature. We can all help to campaign for the right to connect. It is essential that we keep the space open as a white sheet of paper that anyone can use, without being spied on, blocked and diverted."

Larry Lessig, reviewing The Social Network, wrote:

What is important in Zuckerberg’s story is not that he’s a boy genius. He plainly is, but many are. It’s not that he’s a socially clumsy (relative to the Harvard elite) boy genius. Every one of them is. And it’s not that he invented an amazing product through hard work and insight that millions love. The history of American entrepreneurism is just that history, told with different technologies at different times and places.

Instead, what’s important here is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone. The real story is not the invention. It is the platform that makes the invention sing. Zuckerberg didn’t invent that platform. He was a hacker (a term of praise) who built for it. And as much as Zuckerberg deserves endless respect from every decent soul for his success, the real hero in this story doesn’t even get a credit. It’s something Sorkin doesn’t even notice.

John Naughton wrote this month:

Lessig's right: the really significant thing about the internet is that it's an enabler of "permissionless innovation". And this is no accident: it's a consequence of the way the network was designed. Way back in the 1970s, when Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn were pondering the problem of how to create the internet, they came up with two basic principles: there should be no central ownership or control; and the network should be indifferent to the uses to which it was put. If you had an idea and it could be realised by shipping data across the internet, then the network would do it for you, no questions asked.

Look back at this sub-page to lesson 7. Remind yourself who Cerf and Kahn were. Now look for Paul Baran. What diagram is associated with him on that page? 

(These are the two links, in order, that Paul Miller refers to in this tweet: http://dynamicmedianetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/baranx3.jpg and the NYT obituary, Paul Baran, Internet Pioneer, Dies at 84.)

Last word to Tim Berners-Lee:

"When I started the web, I wanted to foster creative interconnectivity, in which people from all around the world can build something together. It's about trying to create a sort of human meta-brain - getting connected brains to function as a greater human brain. With these things, we have to trust in humanity. I think human nature, on balance, is wonderful. If we use the web properly, we can enhance that."