24 Nov Call Me a Hippie, But I’m With Tim
In the 1960s the world was in the middle of a cultural shift. The years of austerity caused by the second world war had come to an end and spawned a society that put great value on fashion, wealth and ambition. But towards the end of the decade, a counter-culture grew on the west coast of America of people who rejected materialism and who valued love and peace and humanitarian values. The hippies would change the world more than they could possibly imagine.
20 years later and many of those west coast ex-hippies had become involved in the tech field that formed the industrial base around San Francisco. And when the web was first envisioned, it had the same ‘anything goes’ attitude as being a leveller, a tool to empower ordinary people to gain access to knowledge and to share it with others. So when Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with the invention of the internet in the late 1980s and early 1990s, spoke out against Apple and Facebook for compromising these principles this week, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. At least, not from me it wasn’t.
Berners-Lee said that these two monolithic companies (among others, mostly social networks) are creating “walled off” areas online that go against the web’s “egalitarian principles”. He said that if we, the internet’s users, allow this to continue, the web could become completely fragmented within a series of walled gardens, making the original concept of being able to share anything with anyone else, anywhere, redundant. And he has a point, right?
I’ve been fascinated by the origins of the internet ever since the superb BBC series The Virtual Revolution earlier this year. Having an understanding of the original principles of the web gives one an insight into what it’s really all about and an ability to look beyond the platforms and software that we interact with every day to see the motivations and psychology of why some things work and why some things don’t. For a digital marketer, I see this is as imperative. And yet it’s so, so easy to get sucked into the latest change to Facebook or the launch of Path or the new RockMelt browser. Berners-Lee’s words have made me take a step back and (hopefully) re-think things. Again.
When it comes to the battle between the likes of Facebook and Google and Apple and Microsoft over who controls the web, I can’t help but sincerely hope that no-one ever wins that battle. Ever. Call me a hippie or a flower child or a lettuce muncher or whatever you like, I’m with Tim on this one – the web is about sharing, so let’s keep it that way.
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