Tim Berners-Lee is in the news one more time. Hailed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, he has a global plan to save his invention from all the shenanigans it has been suffering as of late. With this valiant aim, he has come up with a new Contract for the Web (contractfortheweb.org). It concerns governments, companies, and citizens, each of which is bestowed with three principles: governments must ensure that everyone can connect to the Internet, that all of the Internet is available all of the time, and they must respect and protect people’s fundamental online privacy and data rights; companies must make the Internet affordable and accessible to everyone, respect and protect people’s privacy and personal data to build online trust, and develop technologies that support the best in humanity and challenge the worst; and citizens must be creators and collaborators on the web, build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity, and fight for the web. Wow! Reading the so-called contract over and over again, I cannot but shake my head in disbelief. Are we from the same planet? Pace Berners-Lee, you are barking up the wrong tree. The World Wide Web is turning into a cesspool because the human race knows no better and cannot possibly aspire to anything worthier. For your principles to mean anything, many millions of years must pass. Alas, evolution takes eons! For the foreseeable future, the cesspool will only get wider, deeper, and fouler. By and by, the stench will reach all the way to heaven, too. Amen.

Addendum I (January 15, 2020)

To my surprise, the Contract for the Web is hardly mentioned any longer on the World Wide Web that I am familiar with. And I go mostly for news agencies like the British Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters, Bloomberg News, Al Jazeera, United Press International, Xinhua, and the Associated Press. Less than a couple of months since Tim Berners-Lee briefly came into focus one more time, he is nowhere to be found. Although the Contract website boasts of many corporate supporters of great international acclaim, such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, the worldwide response appears to be tepid at best. Now I wonder what Berners-Lee is going to do about it. Is there any chance that he will eventually figure out that he is barking up the wrong tree? I doubt it, but I still hope that he will come to his senses sooner or later. Fingers crossed.

Addendum II (February 23, 2021)

The Contract for the Web is dead by now. There is not a peep about it anywhere on the web, to be sure. In spite of all the hoopla a couple of years ago, the celebrated inventor of the World Wide Web is as good as dead, as well. By now, governments make sure that not everyone can connect to the Internet; companies do their best to make the Internet unaffordable and inaccessible to everyone; and citizens are neither creators nor collaborators on the web even in their wildest dreams. So much for the three vaunted principles. At his best, Berners-Lee has helped all and sundry understand so much better than ever before what the web actually is not and never could be. Heartfelt congratulations!