Hands off the web, Sir Tim

By Sarah Dempster (THE TIMES, 06/11/06):

LAST WEEK Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, told the Today programme on Radio 4 that he was concerned about the future of his creation. He feared that, if left to develop unchecked, “bad things” could happen to it. Monocles shattered and bow ties were rent asunder as the man who put the wow in hypermedia knowhow went on to reveal that bloggers may not be entirely trustworthy and fraudsters could erode the “usefulness” of his invention.

“Certain undemocratic things could emerge and misinformation will start spreading over the web,” he explained, possibly before running out of the studio, arms flapping wildly about his learned head while screaming something about being “attacked by spy flies”. While it would be churlish to begrudge the creator of HTML a sliver of paranoia (mild eccentricity being as much a feature of innate boffindom as corduroy elbow-patches and having nothing to say at dinner parties), such bold assertions cannot pass without comment. Of course the web is swarming with gits. ’Twas always thus.

Believing, or even hoping, that a medium available to anyone with knuckles and access to a computer will be used solely by nice boys and girls who love their mummy is, frankly, barking. It’s like leaving the door open during your toddler’s birthday party and then expressing surprise when a bunch of teenagers with their bums hanging out of their jeans wander in and steal all the Quavers.

More importantly, what is wrong with a little misinformation now and again? One of the greatest joys of the web is its inbuilt nonsense-factor. It is the planet’s one-stop tosh shop, a sort of cosmic supermarket in which the sensible and worthy rub gigabytes with the daft and duplicitous, and it’s as easy to access a picture of a dog wearing a wig (www.puppytherapy.com) as it is a pie chart detailing government spending in Cornwall (www.cornwall.gov.uk).

While Sir Tim’s intentions are undoubtedly impeccable — he has, after all, just launched a study of the social implications of “web-science” — his calls for the vigilant monitoring of the internet, assuming such an operation could ever work, would succeed only in sucking the fun out of the whole shebang. Besides, given that the lunatics are already running the asylum, wouldn’t it be kinder to just let them get on with it?