Tim Almond

Web Inventor Fears for the Future

He told the BBC: "If we don’t have the ability to understand the web as it’s now emerging, we will end up with things that are very bad.

"Certain undemocratic things could emerge and misinformation will start spreading over the web.

"Studying these forces and the way they’re affected by the underlying technology is one of the things that we think is really important," he said.

I’d like to know more about what Tim’s got in mind, but I don’t share his fear. I personally believe that the internet is so open and democratic that disinformation has little chance to grow. Anyone who makes wild and unproven assertions will have far more people making noise against them.

Arguably, newspapers could do the same. But the barrier to entry was high. Money was required to do the distribution. But anyone can write a blog, post on a newsgroup, build a website. And the thought can be quickly distributed around. 

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Tags: Technology //