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Today, we recognize and celebrate the 30th anniversary of a simple proposal. That proposal was for an information management system. Behind this unassuming title lay a simple, powerful idea: the world wide web, a way for us to share and find information freely across all of connected humanity. History will judge, but many already feel that the paper detailing this proposal was the most significant step forwards since the printing press. Certainly, as we stop to reflect on how our lives have changed and what is to come, it is hard to escape the thought that we are just at the beginning of a transformation of society that is having - and will have -both broad and deep implications. It is also clear that divergent futures lie open before us - and it is not yet clear which path we will go down. The web has already started to change the world around us - and how we shape the web today will shape our lives.
In December 2018 we marked another milestone. It was officially recorded that for the first time, 50% of the world’s population is now connected to the internet - the ‘50/50 moment’. Whether you feel that this is a great achievement or slow progress, it means that all of the innovation and change that we see across our lives today is a result of just a fraction of the world being online - and not for very long. More will come, and likely the pace of innovation will only increase. But it also means that many people are not part of this transformation. They cannot enjoy the benefits nor can they be the next entrepreneur bringing new benefits to others. Furthermore, as access growth rates are slowing and the penetration of digital technologies into the fabric of mainstream economic activity globally continues at pace, we risk dramatically increasing the barriers preventing large swathes of the world from meaningfully participating in the 21st century.
The potential exists for all knowledge to be freely available to anyone in the world. The risk is that we create a two-speed society (globally and nationally) and inter-generational exclusion. The internet is also transforming our values. The classic ‘no-one knows you’re a dog on the internet’ meme was soon reversed. Today, we seem to be caught in a double bind with regards to our own privacy online. High-profile cases like Cambridge Analytica make us worry that powerful organizations, private and public, have all possible information on us and use it in ways we cannot comprehend. Too often this leads to a kind of digital fatalism, and we give up trying to protect ourselves. However, stories of state-sponsored micro-targeting and big brother capabilities erode our trust not only in online services, but in public institutions at large. So digital fatalism spreads, and begins to erode trust in democratic institutions themselves.
For a while, it was clever to claim that privacy is dead - ‘just look at the young people’. And yet, the apps and services that are most popular with young people are those that protect their identities, allow at least some form of pseudonymity and don’t retain historical information. We are seeing an explosion of technologies, products and initiatives that aim to empower individuals with real choice. Real choice beyond surrendering privacy, agency or the service you want to access. Not least is the initiative on which Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor we are celebrating today, spends his time: Solid, a way for each of us to have our own ‘pod’ which contains and allows us to manage all of our own personal data. It is all too easy to think of the web or the internet as being some virtual place, separate and distinct from the real world. However, we already know that this is not true.
The internet has material impact on our real world wellbeing, both for good and bad. On the one hand, the internet can enable elderly people to be supported and monitored in their own homes, improving their quality of life. It can support professionals in high-risk environments with automation or improved intelligence to save lives. The emergence of a new communications standard, 5G, with reduced ‘latency’ will enable real-time remote control in situations never possible before, such as remote surgery or control of research equipment around delicate coral-reefs. But we are also seeing the real-world impacts that can occur when things go wrong online, whether by accident or by design. Identity theft and child safety are topics with which most of us are familiar. However, we are becoming aware of greater risks and potential risks that are emerging. An estimated 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet over the coming years.
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