Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Tim Berners-Lee
I gave the world wide web away for free because I thought that it would only work if it worked for everyone. Today, I believe that to be truer than ever. Regulation and global governance are technically feasible, but reliant on political willpower. If we are able to muster it, we have the chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity and compassion across cultural borders. We can re-empower individuals, and take the web back. It’s not too late.
Tim Berners-Lee had a vision of interconnecting information through links. He persistently championed this idea until his bosses at CERN allowed him to pursue it. He realized that if people could publish anything on the web, they could publish everything on the web. To make that possible, he had to keep it free or no one would use it and his idea would die on the vine. So he convinced his bosses to relinquish their intellectual property rights and give away the World Wide Web.
Then companies moved in, and something that was free transformed into silos they controlled and eventually monetized. This is what Cory Doctorow describes and labels as the “enshittification” of the web.
First, they offer things for free and draw the consumer in. Then they start selling your data to companies and advertisers. Once those companies become dependent, they turn on them as well. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone except the big players and platform owners.
Now, with AI vacuuming up everything on the web, these resources are being consolidated, potentially making things even worse for Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision. I hope he’s right when he says we still have time to avoid making the same mistake again and prevent AI from further degrading the web with “AI slop”.