Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Computer scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web.
On the island
Eight records
Aled Jones with the Clwyd Male Choir and the English Session Orchestra
Lullaby his mother sang to him and his siblings.
Formative folk album from his childhood; the whole family remembers the songs.
Core of the Vietnam protest culture; long, funny folk song.
Reminds him of Switzerland, especially the 'mist covered mountains' line.
Four Strong WindsFavourite
Canadian connection; reminds him of family and friends at the lake. Favourite disc.
Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G major
Heard Yo-Yo Ma play at a small geek dinner; it was wonderful.
Default music for trying out speakers or getting psyched up.
In conversation
Presenter asks
7:46Tell me a little bit about your mother. How would you describe her?
Ooh, she had a twinkle in her eye, and she was shorter than people imagined after they talked to her on the phone. Lots of different facets to her, I suppose. At one point, she'd gone to Australia to work at the Mount Stromblow Observatory, helping them take photographs of the sky. She got a motorbike when she was out there, so she had a tent made from parachute material. I think her experience of being on a motorbike, going out in the bush in Australia, gave her the feeling that she didn't really need anything else. She was tremendously self-sufficient.
Presenter asks
26:44Did you know at that point that you had a world changing idea on your hands?
Well, I wanted it to be global and I wanted to be universal. I couldn't appreciate how successful it would be, but it took off so that the number of hits per day on our first web server went up by a factor of 10 in the first year, and then it went up by a factor of 10 in the next year, and then it went up by a factor of 10 the next year. So then it was a thousand times the original level, and so it looked as though something was going on.
Presenter asks
31:01From the very beginning you were determined that the web should be free for everyone to use. Why exactly?
The keepsakes
The book
Christopher Alexander and others
It's a book about spaces, uh designing spaces, patterns for architecture, par patterns for designers of towns. So it's just a g a book full of all kinds of interesting thoughts about people and space.
The luxury
I wondered about the toolbox, but I think I'll go for the chromatic harmonica.
Well, it's really important that it's free because otherwise it wouldn't be for everyone. If I'd made it for paything, then there would have been competing systems, they wouldn't have been all been compatible, it has to be universal. The fact that you can click on the link, it can take you anywhere in the world, that's a huge ask. I can't also ask for two cents a click.
Presenter asks
38:56How do you think this type of damaging content should be controlled? What would you like to see?
If somebody posts a nasty message and you read it. Then there's two things to think about there. One of them was why did the person originally post the nasty post? But the other one is why did the algorithm send it to so many people? So there's a I have a suspicion that the algorithms out there are using angry making posts to keep people involved because they're trying to optimize it for engagement. … So some people have suggested that you could you know you could actually make that illegal to use rage bait. If you're actually deliberately trying to bait people with rage to say on the platform, then that has a very negative effect on society.
Presenter asks
43:43How optimistic are you about the future of the web today?
Basically, I'm optimistic, because I can imagine the world in which it's Interrupt. We've built systems where the people where you have control of your own data and you have all your data in your data wallet, and then you run an AI on it. And so that the results that it gives you are very, very much better. This sort of combination of AI, the power of AI, but then with digital sovereignty that the AI works for you, I think is going to be really powerful and valuable for the world.
“Ooh, she had a twinkle in her eye, and she was shorter than people imagined after they talked to her on the phone.”
“In a way, anything you can do with your computer, I can do with my computer. So it's not a question of what the power of our computer is, only the question of the power of our imaginations.”
“So when we were in school, in high school, then the transistor got invented. When we were in university, the processor chip got invented. But we could understand about relays when we were in kindergarten. So my cohort was really lucky. The world invented what it needed as it were just in time.”
“Well, it's really important that it's free because otherwise it wouldn't be for everyone. If I'd made it for paything, then there would have been competing systems, they wouldn't have been all been compatible, it has to be universal. The fact that you can click on the link, it can take you anywhere in the world, that's a huge ask. I can't also ask for two cents a click.”
“But like any u web user to a certain extent, what we found with the Web Foundation is that you have to get pe every now and again you have to get people to fight for the web. So I've spent a lot of my life fighting for the web, but also people listening to this, there may be a point when they have to fight for the web that they want rather than the web that they're going to get otherwise.”