World Wide Web creator warns of cheats and liars

Shocking news! Shocking, I say

The creator of the World Wide Web said on Thursday night that the Internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the Web in the early 1990s, says that if the Internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness.

For years I've been under the impression that Al Gore created the Internet, but apparently that is not so.

If you can believe me, that is. After all, this is a blog you are reading:

He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the Web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.

Berners-Lee believes devotees of blogging sites take too much information on trust.

"The blogging world works by people reading blogs and linking to them. You're taking suggestions of what you read from people you trust. That, if you like, is a very simple system, but in fact the technology must help us express much more complicated feelings about who we'll trust with what," he said.

The next generation of the Internet needs to be able to reassure users that they can establish the original source of the information they digest.

Well then, guess I'd better provide this link to the article I've quoted.

I'd like to offer a link to the full transcript of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's comments, but unfortunately the Guardian doesn't provide one.

(But here's a wikipedia bio.

The first Web site built was at http://info.cern.ch/ and was first put online on August 6, 1991. It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own a browser and how to set up a Web server. It was also the world's first Web directory, since Berners-Lee maintained a list of other Web sites apart from his own.

One wonders exactly how others could access such a site. But rumor has it that the first commenter on the site declared that Berners-Lee was an "asshat" - this may still influence his comments today.)