The follow-up reading this week is a webpage written by Tim Berners-Lee where he answers a lot of FAQs for anyone researching and/or learning about how the World Wide Web has invented. Whilst reading this for myself I found various sections very informative and of great interest. Particularly, where Berners-Lee explains how webpages are found and opened on your computer when you click a link by your computers sending packets of information to other computers.
Additionally, myself partially included, a lot of people in the world use the internet and the web every day and have no real insight to what or how it happens to work. From my initial personal experience of the internet and the web, I can remember my dad bringing home our first personal computer and having dial-up internet during my time at Primary School. At this time I did not use computers for the web until later on when we upgraded to broadband.
I believe Berners-Lee summarised the internet and the web very concisely by stating that the World Wide Web is a tool and ‘that any really powerful thing can be used for good or evil.’ His hope is that ‘the Web can help people understand each other.’ Berners-Lee continued on to finish by stating, ‘Let’s use the web to create neat new exciting things. Let’s use the Web to help people understand each other.’
Reading Source:
I think you’ve grasped Berners-Lee’s message really well Josh; thinking about how he summarised the internet, do you think he would be happy with the internet’s current state considering the rise of nefarious uses such as trolling and the spread of extremism?
Thanks and I think Berners-Lee knew during the creation of his webpage that the web is a very powerful tool which unfortunately can also be ‘for downloading pictures of horrible, gruesome, violent or obscene things, or ways of making bombs which terrorists could use.’