2011: The Year the Web We Know, and Dream Of, Dies

As we head into the end of 2010 and the birth of a new year I have been pre-occupied with what is happening to The Web. It is a web that I have been lucky to have been around long enough to see it being given birth to.

From my days running bulletin board services and conversations in echos (FidoNET conversation groups) about some new thing called the Internet through to now, when we can create and share content on a level never imagined, our world has changed.

However it wasn’t the Internet itself that brought about change, it was just the vehicle by which change arrived in an almost minor and innocuous way. The real change began at CERN in the early 1990’s with the efforts of Tim Berners-Lee to figure out some way to update, and easily manage, the CERN telephone book.

Since the early 1980’s Berners-Lee had been playing around with ways to be able to link and share data that was being created daily at CERN. It started first with a small Pascal written program called Enquire that has long since vanished into the great bit-bucket in the sky. Then there was a failed attempted called Tangle that was written during his second stay at CERN.

It wasn’t until his third return and a new-fangled personal computer called the NeXT that all the pieces started coming together. Through it all though was Tim’s burning belief that the World Wide Web, as it was later called, Should be drop dead simple and available to anyone – both as a consumer and creator.

What that first bit of Enquire code led me to was something much larger, a vision encompassing the decentralized, organic growth of ideas, technology and society. The vision I have for the Web is about anything being potentially connected with anything. It is a vision that provides us with new freedom, and allows us to grow faster than we ever could when we were fettered by the hierarchical classification systems into which we bound ourselves. It leaves the entirety of our previous ways of working as just one tool among many. It leaves our previous fears for the future as one set among many. And it brings the workings of society closer to the workings of our minds. – Weaving the Web :: Tim Berners-Lee

For the most part, the early days of the Web were under the radar. FidoNET slowly disappeared and companies like AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve believed they would be duking it out for the king of the hill on this new thing called The Internet. Slowly though, The Web grew, browser download by browser download, ISP server install by server install.

In some ways it seems like one day it wasn’t there and then in the next instant Prodigy and Compuserve were gone, AOL became a shadow of itself, and The Web was everywhere. The early days, while filled with early visionaries of what was possible, were for the most part a grand experiment where money flowed like it had never flowed before.

The silos were down and the portals to immense wealth proved to be just as illusionary as the DotCom Bust smashed through the late 90’s. Out of its ashes though grew a Web that was about the people and a vision for a more equal world. It proved to be as resilient in spirit as the people who now flocked to it in droves. From the brilliant and world changers to the mundane, and yes even the stupid, we all suddenly found ourselves with the tools and platforms to be a part of something bigger.

But something has been happening over the past couple of years that while slow to start has been gaining momentum. It is a momentum that is changing the Web that people like Tim Berners-Lee dreamed of as he worked at his NeXT computer. It is a momentum that ironically grown out of the very tools that gave us all a way to create a world without silos.

It is a Web where entertainment conglomerates dictate to governments around the world how they should deal with issues like copyrights and piracy, even to the point of writing the laws for them to pass. It is a Web where because we are allowed to use software for free we increasingly find the definition of privacy and what is personal information being changed for us.

We have a Web where governments have no compunctions against seizing domains without due process for no other reason than the say-so of some third party. We have a Web where both companies and governments are exerting choke hold control on websites that threaten any kind of status quo.

This is a Web that is seeing the return of silos under the guise of being the new open web but in reality all they are doing is insinuating their information gathering tendrils in such a way that it makes government agencies like the CIA and FBI green with envy. Whether it is the Facebook Web, the Twitter Web or some such other social media whitewash the fact is that we are all being herded back into a silo web.

The days of a free web is slowly disappearing and while in some ways that is a good thing in other ways it portends a web that is increasingly controlled by the very companies providing access and content. While the FCC pretends that it is in the ‘net neutrality’ battle for the ‘common man’ it provides the mechanisms for access providers to create a multi-tiered web that act as roadblocks that will only benefit those providing access.

The Web has changed over the years and while for a short period of time it held out the possibility of great social change that time has come to an end. As we leave 2010 behind us we also leave behind a Web that had risen like a phoenix out of the mess of the 90’s only to see it’s visionary future doused as we head into 2011.

The Web has changed but nothing like it is going to change during the coming year. Unfortunately it won’t be the kind of change that will be remembered with any fondness or kindness by future generations.

I wonder what Tim thinks as he looks on to what is being done to something he was so instrumental in bring to life?