Clearly, I’m indebted to Tim Berners-Lee. Without him, I may be doing something entirely different for a living.

However, although I agree with most of his latest article over at Scientific American (certainly the aspects regarding totalitarian governments) I’m a little surprised at some of the apparent contradictions. For example, he states:

The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles.

And goes on to say:

Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web.

Hang on a minute, surely every user has a right to protect their own privacy? Surely it’s an implicit “egalitarian” majority decision that this should be the case? Facebook for example allows users to make vast amounts of personal information available to the world at large, but most people choose not to. It’s almost like saying, back when homes were invented, it was a mistake to include a lockable door.

Also, he seems to think that the web would’ve advanced as far as it has without being partially driven by commercial opportunities.

Apple’s iTunes system, for example, identifies songs and videos using URIs that are open. But instead of “http:” the addresses begin with “itunes:,” which is proprietary. You can access an “itunes:” link only using Apple’s proprietary iTunes program. You can’t make a link to any information in the iTunes world—a song or information about a band. You can’t send that link to someone else to see. You are no longer on the Web. The iTunes world is centralized and walled off. You are trapped in a single store, rather than being on the open marketplace. For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up.

Unsurprisingly, when an organisation creates amazing technology, they don’t often wish to allow everyone to share in their rewards. Although, what he overlooks is the fact that Apple encourage the development of apps and a whole community of developers has arisen off the back of it.

Tim also makes a point regarding monopolies and how they can inhibit fresh thinking. Well taking Apple as an example, surely without their commercial aims, we might not have an alternative to the PC.

And it’s not like there aren’t rivals to Google either.

Restrictive Governments aside, the web IS running on egalitarian principles. We chose to make it this way.