On The Hill: The Internet's Father Talks About The Future

Telecom Policy Report, March 5, 2007

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is back in the saddle again, chairing the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and The Internet and hosting the Internet's real father - Sir Timothy Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web Consortium and MIT - after 12 years out of the center square.

Sir Berners-Lee studied physics at Oxford and joined the electronics and computer science industry for several years. In 1980, he worked on a contract at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. In 1984, he returned to CERN for 10 years, during which he discovered the need for a universal information system, so he developed the World Wide Web as a side project in 1990. In 1994, the need for coordination of the Web became paramount, and Berners-Lee left to come to MIT, which became the first of now three international host institutes for the World Wide Web Consortium; he's directed W3C since that time. He also holds the 3Com Founders Chair at MIT, where he pursues research on advanced Web technologies with the MIT Decentralized Information Group.

The subject at hand? The "Digital Future of the United States: Part 1 - The Future of the World Wide Web." Kicking the meeting off, Markey pointed to the Internet as being "indispensable to companies large and small," not to mention everyone else on the planet who spends time in front of a computer screen.

"I think it's smart to talk to him before we dig any deeper," commented Mike Doyle, vice chair, adding that Berners-Lee could provide a broad view "from 30,000 feet up."

Berners-Lee concentrated his testimony on keeping the Internet "universal, independent and royalty-free" with no fees levied on driving the Information Highway. He did, however, say that there's nothing wrong with charging for content. He also mentioned that while his groups are working on futurist digital networks, they still contend with the more mundane stuff as HTML, user interfaces and better access.

Berners-Lee urged lawmakers to keep in mind the principle of universality and the separation of layers, saying the most important thing legislators should remember as they mull the issues affecting the World Wide Web is the importance of protecting communication, which allows science, politics, education, romance and even personal diaries to flourish.

Here's what Berners-Lee said about:

>>Digital rights management: "You can make better software that will track copyrighted material. Technology can make it easy to do the right thing."

>>Healthcare and the Internet: "There are a lot more ways the Internet could be used, like better patient records, but this involves a lot of privacy policy changes and standards as to how files can be read by anyone who needs to. To cut the costs of healthcare, we can look at remote care by experts who don't have to travel anymore [to evaluate a patient]."

>>The Top Two issues that need to be addressed: "I hope net neutrality is a short-term thing. Then we have to look at patents and how some standards need to be royalty- free to protect the new markets that will come about in the future."

A Shortened Version Of Sir Tim's Testimony

For those who want to know more about how the father of the Internet believes his child will grow and flourish, read on:

"I'd like to highlight three areas in which I expect exciting developments in the near future. First, the Web will get better and better at helping us to manage, integrate and analyze data. Today, the Web is quite effective at helping us to publish and discover documents, but the individual information elements within those documents (whether it be the date of any event, the price of an item on a catalog page, or a mathematical formula) cannot be handled directly as data. Today you can see the data with your browser, but can't get other computer programs to manipulate or analyze it without going through a lot of manual effort yourself. As this problem is solved, we can expect that Web as a whole to look more like a large database or spreadsheet, rather than just a set of linked documents.

"Second, the Web be accessible from growing diversity of networks (wireless, wireline, satellite, etc.) and will be available on a ever increasing number of different types of devices.

"Finally, in a related trend, Web applications will become a more and more ubiquitous throughout our human environment, with walls, automobile dashboards, refrigerator doors all serving as displays giving us a window onto the Web.

"For a long time the dominant mode of using the Web was from a desktop or laptop computer with a reasonably large display. Increasingly, people will use non-PC devices that have either much smaller or much larger displays, and will reach the Internet through a growing diversity of networks. At one end of this spectrum, the devices will seem more like cellphones. At the other end, they will seem more like large screen TVs. There are, of course, technical challenges associated with squeezing a Web page designed for a 17-inch screen into the two- to-four-inch display available on a mobile phone or PDA. Some of these will be solved through common standards and some through innovative new interface techniques. I would encourage all web sites designers to ensure that their material conforms not only to World Wide Web Consortium standards, but also to guidelines for accessibility for people with disabilities, and for mobile access.