When the biographers look back on our times – and the hype of contemporariness has faded – Tim Berners-Lee will be recalled as one of the great ones. He will join the kind of real innovators that includes the likes of Archimedes, Leonardo, Franklin and Edison. His achievement is a big step above the acquisition of a few billion dollars, which gives us our temporary digital big guys.
Berners-Lee gave us the open network. That innovation ranks with ideas like the world being round and the sun at the center of our planetary grouping. You probably think I am wandering into hyperbole, but I do not think so. The phase we are now going through in the digital world is something we are calling Web 2.0. What that is at the core is the emergence into prominence of openness. Openness is a gift that just keeps giving – unless we manage to squelch it.
Open networks have a great deal more to give. It is very important to pay attention to Tim Berners-Lee and others who can guide us to keep that giving rolling out.
In his keynote speech to the 3GSM World Congress 07, Tim Berners-Lee told the largely technical and business crowd some detailed stuff about the emphasis the W3C that he leads is now putting on the Mobile Web. He concluded his talk with the following three paragraphs of guidance we are wise to heed about the gifts that are within our grasp by moving toward the Mobile Web.
Among other things, many of us are hoping that a low-cost open platform will have a much greater penetration in what we currently call the developing world. I personally believe that it is important to humanity to connect peoples across the world as widely as possible. I think we must preserve the diversity of cultures and ideas. But also I think we must connect people to give more global harmony. We should not add connectivity to the long list that the richer countries have and the poorer ones do not, a list which of course has clean water, health care and peace pretty near the top.
As part of the Mobile Web Initiative, W3C held a workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries. One of the concerns is that some of the new phones aimed at the lower cost bracket don’t all have Web browsers. The area is very exciting, and the figures for coverage – 80% of the world’s population I have heard (World Bank, according to Wikipedia), and for market growth in developing countries seem very positive.
So when we look at the choices for the mobile devices, it is clear that they must continue on the path to an open Web platform. That is what the Mobile Web Initiative is about. Huge new markets, and huge opportunities for humanity, depend on this. We know in general how to do it. But there is a lot to do.
