At the Web Summit Technology Conference in Lisbon, Tim Berners Lee announced that he is working on “Contract for the Web” that will revolutionize the Internet, as we know it.
Since the World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners back when he was working at CERN; the Internet has seen many trends and radical shifts. Some have improved the lives of users, but few changes have become a menace for the online community.
Online abuse, discrimination, political manipulation and much more have overtaken the Internet by a large, which is why the father of the Internet wants to save the web. On the sideline, he is also working on a project called “Solid” to de-centralize the Internet.
In the Summit, Tim asked for all the government authorities, companies and individuals to back his project. The contract is based on a set of nine guiding principles, three from each sector – government, business, and people.
According to Tim, each will play a significant role in shaping the new Internet. For instance, the government will make sure that everyone is connected to the Internet, and the privacy of the user is respected, at all times.
On the other hand, companies will look forward to making the Internet more affordable. And just like the real world, people will play the roles of leaders, collaborators, and creators.
While these are only some sneak peeks in the contract, the full version of the contract called ‘Magna Carta for the web‘ will be published in May 2019. Soon, a campaign is also going to be set up called “#ForTheWeb” to market the contract and turn it into a reality.
Until now, many prominent organizations and individuals have already signed the contract. These include former UK prime minister Gordon Brown and companies like Facebook and Google.
Interestingly, both the tech giants have repeatedly come under scrutiny for many Internet-related incidents. For instance, Facebook was part of Cambridge Analytica Scandal where millions of users private information was misused. Google, in 2017, was fined over 2.7 billion USD for abusing search results in its search engine
“Humanity connected by technology on the web is functioning in a dystopian way. We have online abuse, prejudice, bias, polarisation, fake news, there are lots of ways in which it is broken. This is a contract to make the web one which serves humanity, science, knowledge, and democracy,” said Tim during the summit.
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