Is it Time for the Internet to Grow Up?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In its short lifetime, the world wide web has raised giants and monsters. It's transformed sections of the economy, from retail to publishing and the music industry. It has had a profound effect on journalism and the transmission of ideas. It has facilitated social networks which have penetrated deep into the private lives of millions of people around the world. It has even been held responsible for far-reaching political upheavals like the Arab Spring.
Some internet evangelists compare the web to the Wild West, a territory full of exciting opportunity that will lose its character and potential if it's brought under the rule of law. Others insist that the web is too disruptive to established institutions and practices and must be tamed. So, what do we want from the next 25 years of the internet? And how can we go about getting it?
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading Analysis from the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | For over 40 years, Analysis has been examining the ideas and forces which shape public policy in Britain and abroad. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm David Baker and in this program as we mark |
| 0:16.8 | the web's 25th birthday we consider what we want from the web's next 25 years. |
| 0:23.0 | Listen, this is the sound of the living growing internet. |
| 0:37.0 | It comes from a website called Listen to Wikipedia. |
| 0:40.0 | It translates everything that happens on the online encyclopedia into a musical note. |
| 0:45.0 | A plucked string represents something being added by a user. |
| 0:49.0 | A bell is something being deleted. |
| 0:52.0 | The bigger the change, the lower the note. And whenever |
| 0:56.6 | someone logs on to Wikipedia for the first time, there's a swell of strings. Wikipedia works on two basic principles |
| 1:08.0 | that are at the foundation of everything that happens on the internet. |
| 1:11.0 | First, it's open. Anyone can contribute anything. And second, it's equal. Every |
| 1:18.3 | contribution has the same weight as every other. It's these two principles that have made the internet such a powerful |
| 1:25.7 | force, full of new ideas that have already changed the world. Let's hear from two long-time champions of the internet. Jeff Jarvis teaches journalism |
| 1:37.0 | at the City University of New York. He's excited about the profound potential of the web. |
| 1:43.0 | Oh, good God, we've seen incredible innovation on the web thus far, |
| 1:47.0 | and it's just a hint of, I think, what could come. |
| 1:49.0 | There's no predicting the future, of course, |
| 1:51.0 | and there's lots of disruption to be had in my industry |
| 1:54.6 | in journalism in yours and broadcasting in retail in airlines and you name the |
| 1:59.8 | industry it's been changed by the web so far. The web is open. |
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