Global action is required to tackle the web’s “downward plunge to a dysfunctional future”, its creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee has told the BBC this week.
He made the comments in an exclusive interview to mark 30 years since he submitted his proposal for the web.
Clearly Sir Tim created the web with his own design intent for good, so it must grieve him deeply on a personal level to see that which he created for good, be abused.
In fact, it was our own aversion and concern over the ‘dark/bad’ side of the web that made us stay clear of it for so long.
We had looked at options for starting an online business from home because of the time and financial freedom the online business model offered, in particular it would lend itself to some of our overseas charity work, enabling us to generate an income 24/7 from anywhere in the world as long as we had a laptop and wifi (the good side to the web).
But, we were very skeptical about online scams, and so didn’t know who we could really trust to start off with in a virtual world.
At the same time we realised we were actually already living in our own ‘scam’ if we thought by carrying on in the same traditional economic system things would somehow magically change by themselves for the better.
So, we realised we had to take responsibility and action to leverage the many benefits the web offered, rather than just focus on the negative aspects, and we’re so glad we did.
In our world where we live, there is use and abuse of everything that was intended to be provided for our good. There’s nothing necessarily inherently wrong in anything, it’s whether we chose to use that ‘thing’ that ‘tool’ that ‘provision’ for good or for evil, that’s what really matters.
So, is the web a force for evil or good?
That really depends on each of us and our free choice.
So what will you chose to use the web for?