Interview with ir Tim Berners-Lee, the Creator of the First Website

This interview is conducted by the BBC Newsnight’s Mark Lawson with the creator of the first website in August 1991, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. According to the latter, the web is a space or a platform that knows no geographical boundaries. Indeed, it allows to people from the four corners of the world to communicate and share information with each other. The web is a new and universal medium that allow people, depending on how good or bad their intention is, to create content for other people. The web is a powerful tool that can extremely harm browsers; though, Sir Tim Berners-Lee does not feel responsible for that, since his first intention was to help users positively, and he is glad of his invention despite the disadvantages. Moreover, Tim Berners-Lee emphasizes that the idea of blogging or creating content on the web was inspired from his very first idea of a read/write web seventeen years ago (1991). However, he estimates that just typing text instead of hypertext, i.e. blogging, is much simpler for users which he considered as a new creative medium. Concerning the future of the web in 30 years, Tim Berners-Lee expects that it will something more stable, people won’t talk about it; the web will be a universal medium that will be very flexible, and that humanity will consider as a clean slate.

Reflection: Personally, I agree with Tim Berners-Lee because I also believe it is hard to answer whether the drawbacks of the web are worth paying its benefits. However, I think that the web is more useful than harmful. It is up to us, the browsers, to distinguish or filter the bad from the good information or content thanks to many functions and tools that the computer software offers to users. We can cite the pop-up blocker that the browser could either turn on or off, and which block advertising pop-ups and especially those coming from porn sites. Other tools are the phishing filter or the automatic website checking. Concerning the credibility or the quality of information, one could simply use the domain of the website to judge it; for example, .edu, .org. , are considered more reliable.