Save the web to help save the world: Web now in our lives for 30 years
There can hardly be more valuable personality traits than a robust sense of optimism and great physical and intellectual energy. Kindness is another priceless characteristic but, in today’s world, an active, positive perspective seems the most relevant and ever-more necessary. So many issues crowd on those lucky enough to live contented lives that the capacity to identify the silver lining in one of the many clouds gathering on the horizon is to be cherished.
Climate change and the catastrophe it promises are staples of our daily conversation, though that unavoidable acknowledgment has yet to be reflected in meaningful countermeasures. Anyone who considers these issues cannot but be disheartened, and frightened, by our inadequate response and the deepening sense that time is slipping away.
This week, it is impossible not to think that British politics have imploded in a way that will have consequences far beyond the bailiwick of those playing out their Brexit fantasies. It is, of course, tempting just to look away, but the stakes are so high that that hardly seems an option.
US President Donald Trump’s disruptions have divided America and seem to have divided the Democratic Party, too, making his re-election a very real prospect. How that might exacerbate hostilities, as yet confined to trade, between America and China, is anyone’s guess, but the chorus of warning voices grows louder every month — as does the chorus of economists (the dismal science after all) warning about an approaching financial crisis.
The growing gap between rich and poor is epitomised by the death of the family farm in America and increasingly in Europe, where traditional holdings are being swept up by conglomerates for industrial-scale production of food
animals, and by how the pharma sector and medical research increasingly serve markets rather than patients.
For anyone given to dark moments, there is a spectacular smörgåsbord of opportunities to wallow in pessimism — but there is another, maybe, apart from climate change, the most significant of all.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, has just marked the 30th anniversary of that transformative moment to re-emphasise the need to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and myriad other threats that afflict our online world. He warned that (though no-one with even a passing interest in the world could not but know it already), in recent years, the web has not been living up to the high hopes it once offered. Built as an open tool for collaboration and empowerment, it has been hijacked by crooks and trolls, who misuse it to manipulate the gullible all over the world.
The misuse of the personal information of up to 87m Facebook users to influence the 2016 American election may be the starkest example of this so far, but, just last week, EU security officials warned about similar interventions in May’s European elections. The response must be cultural and legislative and there is an urgency — unless you’d like our world to become even more challenging. Have a good day.
