One of the founding fathers of the internet, no…not Gore has spoken out on the future of the web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is worried that the net will be used to spread misinformation by “undemocratic forces”. I would offer that this has already come and gone time and again. Look at the famous “patriot” missle battery. During the first gulf war this thing couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn but the stories of it’s apparent success rate swirled. Berners-Lee

told the BBC: “If we don’t have the ability to understand the web as it’s now emerging, we will end up with things that are very bad.

“Certain undemocratic things could emerge and misinformation will start spreading over the web.

“Studying these forces and the way they’re affected by the underlying technology is one of the things that we think is really important,” he said.

In his interview with the BBC he makes a point of the fact that no one is teaching courses on the science of the web . A fundamental understanding of how the web works is drifting away into the dusts of time.

“We’re hearing complaints from companies when they need people that really understand the medium from both the technological and social side.

“When you look at university courses, web science isn’t there - it seems to fall through the cracks.

“So we’d like to put it on the curriculum so that there are a lot more people who understand this.”

Education is necessary to help build upon the success of the past forerunners such as Berners-Lee.

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Tags: Tim Berners-Lee, Internet, Web, Web Science