Internet Inventor Warns Web 'Not Working for Women'

The internet is "not working for women" and is fuelling a new era of widespread abuse against females, the creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, warned on Thursday.

In a bleak assessment published on the World Wide Web Foundation, an organisation founded by Berners-Lee that advocates a free and open web for all, he also argued that a "dangerous trend" of abuse threatens any advances in gender equality.

"The web is not working for women and girls," he wrote.

"The world has made important progress on gender equality thanks to the unceasing drive of committed champions everywhere.

"But I am seriously concerned that online harms facing women and girls -- especially those of colour, from LGBTQ+ communities and other marginalised groups -- threaten that progress." The abuse was so extensive that "over half of young women surveyed have experienced violence online", said Berners-Lee, citing a survey from the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

The world-famous computer engineer also highlighted that discrimination was being further fuelled as many women could not get access to the internet.

Citing the foundation's own research, he said men were 21 percent more likely to be online, rising to 52 percent in the world's least developed countries.

Berners-Lee said such inequalities threaten the "Contract for the Web", a global action plan he launched a year ago to prevent the internet becoming a "digital dystopia". (AFP)

Father of Internet Wants One and Free Blockchain Protocol, Just Like HTTP

The inventor of the World Wide Web aka 'the Internet' and one of Time Magazine's '100 Most Important People of the 20th Century', Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is quite upset and concerned about the where his creation is taking the world as we know it today.

Tim Berners-Lee created the HTTP protocol that enabled everyone to communicate with everyone across the world and because of his this very grand vision, the world-wide-web was created, revolutionizing every human's life on this planet.

However this very notion of ONE & SINGLE protocol for blockchain is not being manifested and today we are seeing different ICOs, companies doing the same thing with different titles -- Euthereum, Bitcoin, Ripple, Hyperledger and many more -- all have different brand name, technology and protocol for same technology we call 'Blockchain'.

Father of Internet, Berners-Lee, who worked several years to develop an idea of a free and open source internet, now started advocating for “unified blockchain protocol of transport”.

During an interview for the August edition of Vanity Fair, Berners-Lee confessed that he’s not really excited about what has become of the web.

Berners-Lee says that like the internet has single, unified protocol called - HTTP, the same can be done with a “stable” currency on blockchain and it could actually be relative simple to do so by using a proprietary and patented Blockchain protocol. The patent proceeds could then be actually used to improve the “unified blockchain protocol of transport”.

Blockchain technology helps the internet evolve into a new system, more fair for everyone, taking the power away from central authorities and giving individuals control of what they do, when and how.

The concept of decentralized internet, where no central authority will rule the ecosystem, has been badly affected by tech giants Facebook, Google, and Amazon who now monopolize almost everything on internet (and thus our lives), from "what we buy" to the "news we read" to "who we like".

And, Blockchain which in fact is a 'Decentralized Approach" based technology, destroys this very GOD-ism of tech giants like Facebook, which had to face different questions about how they process data from individuals on their platforms. Fortunately, people across the globe are more aware about their rights than what they have been since a very long time.

During a conference in Toronto, Tim Berners-Lee said that “the blockchain and the web will connect together in lots of interesting ways.”

The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past -- is one of a famous quotes of Tim-Berners-Lee.

Via - BBN Times | Cryptovest