Internet Inventor Tim Berners-Lee: Web Access is a Human Right
Online access is a basic human right that should be made freely available to everyone, according to Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
During a speech at an MIT symposium Tuesday (April 12) Berners-Lee compared people's right to access the Internet with the right of access to water.
"Access to the Web is now a human right," Berners-Lee said. "It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger."
According to a report from Network World, Berners-Lee warned during his talk that today’s Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, have too much control over how people use the Web.
He also urged developers to develop mobile Web apps that can run on any smartphone, regardless of its operating system, rather than develop OS-specific apps, which is the tendency of software developers today.
Berners-Lee said the Internet should be a system in which scientists can share data and information more effectively. "The Web has grown so large that the number of Web pages rivals the number of neurons in a human brain ," Berners-Lee said. "And the Web must be analyzed, just as we analyze the brain."
Berners-Lee spoke at the MIT symposium on "Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything," as part of the school's 150th anniversary celebration. Other notable speakers included Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child, who also created the MIT Media Lab.
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