by Playfuls Staff |
24th May 2006
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web in 1989 while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, and wrote the first web client and server in 1990 has warned against moves to break it up into separate tiers. He told at a 13th World Wide Web Conference in Edinburgh,that the internet would enter a "dark period" if this was allowed to happen. This is the first time that the conference was attended by key players who shape the internet and has been held in the UK.[more]
The internet has exploded into every area of life since Sir Tim developed the web in 1989 as an academic tool to allow scientists to share data. However, there have been increasingly diverse opinions on how it should evolve.
There are moves by some telecommunications companies in the United States to give priority to information from bodies which pay a fee. The idea of paying for different kinds of access to the internet has also been raised. However, the World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is director, and companies such as Microsoft and Google, believe in the idea of "network neutrality".
According to this guiding principle, the web, which was originally designed to allow academics to share information, should be accessible to all on an equal footing and all the information contained on it should be treated in the same way.He said the correct way of running the internet was that people should pay for a connection, but not face any kind of discrimination when they searched for information.
