WEBVTT

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TED is 30.

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The World Wide Web is celebrating this month

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its 25th anniversary.

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So I've got a question for you:

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let's talk about the journey.

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Let's talk about the state.

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Let's talk about what sort of a Web we want.

NOTE Paragraph

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So 25 years ago, then, I was working at CERN.

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I got permission in the end after about a year

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to basically do it as a side project.

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I wrote the code.

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I was I suppose the first user.

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There was a lot of concern

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that people didn't want to pick it up

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because it would be too complicated.

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A lot of persuasion, a lot of wonderful

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collaboration with other people,

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and bit by bit, it worked.

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It took off. It was pretty cool.

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And in fact, a few years later in 2000,

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five percent of the world population

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were using the World Wide Web.

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In 2007, seven years later, 17 percent.

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In 2008, we formed the World Wide Web Foundation

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partly to look at that

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and worry about that figure.

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And now here we are in 2014,

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and 40 percent of the world

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are using the World Wide Web, and counting.

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Obviously it's increasing.

NOTE Paragraph

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I want you to think about both sides of that.

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Okay, obviously to anybody here at TED,

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the first question you ask is, what can we do

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to get the other 60 percent on board

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as quickly as possible?

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Lots of important things. Obviously
it's going to be around mobile.

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But also, I want you to think about the 40 percent,

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because if you're sitting there yourself

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sort of with a web-enabled life,

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you don't remember things anymore,

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you just look them up,

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then you may feel that it's been a success

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and we can all sit back.

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But in fact, yeah, it's been a success,

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there's lots of things, Khan Academy

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for crying out loud, there's Wikipedia,

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there's a huge number of free ebooks

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that you can read online,

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lots of wonderful things for education,

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things in many areas.

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Online commerce has in some cases

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completely turned upside down the
way commerce works altogether,

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made types of commerce available

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which weren't available at all before.

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Commerce has been almost universally affected.

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Government, not universally affected,

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but very affected, and on a good day,

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lots of open data, lots of egovernment,

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so lots of things which are visible

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happening on the Web.

NOTE Paragraph

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Also, lots of things which are less visible.

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The health care, late at night when they're worried

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about what sort of cancer

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somebody they care about might have,

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when they just talk across the Internet to somebody

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who they care about very much in another country.

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Those sorts of things are not, they're not out there,

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and in fact they've acquired
a certain amount of privacy.

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So we cannot assume that part of the Web,

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part of the deal with the Web,

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is when I use the Web,

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it's just a transparent, neutral medium.

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I can talk to you over it without worrying

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about what we in fact now know is happening,

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without worrying about the fact

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that not only will surveillance be happening

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but it'll be done by people who may abuse the data.

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So in fact, something we realized,

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we can't just use the Web,

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we have to worry about

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what the underlying infrastructure of the whole thing,

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is it in fact of a quality that we need?

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We revel in the fact that we
have this wonderful free speech.

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We can tweet, and oh, lots and lots of people

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can see our tweets, except when they can't,

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except when actually Twitter
is blocked from their country,

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or in some way the way we try to express ourselves

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has put some information
about the state of ourselves,

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the state of the country we live in,

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which isn't available to anybody else.

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So we must protest and make sure

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that censorship is cut down,

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that the Web is opened up

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where there is censorship.

NOTE Paragraph

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We love the fact that the Web is open.

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It allows us to talk. Anybody can talk to anybody.

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It doesn't matter who we are.

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And then we join these big

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social networking companies

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which are in fact effectively built as silos,

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so that it's much easier to talk to somebody

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in the same social network

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than it is to talk to somebody in a different one,

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so in fact we're sometimes limiting ourselves.

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And we also have, if you've read
the book about the filter bubble,

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the filter bubble phenomenon is that

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we love to use machines

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which help us find stuff we like.

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So we love it when we're baited

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on what things we like to click on,

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and so the machine automatically feeds us

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the stuff that we like and we end up

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with this rose-colored, spectacled view of the world

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called a filter bubble.

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So here are some of the things which maybe

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threaten the social web we have.

NOTE Paragraph

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What sort of Web do you want?

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I want one which is not
fragmented into lots of pieces,

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as some countries have been suggesting

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they should do in reaction to recent surveillance.

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I want a Web which has got, for example,

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is a really good basis for democracy.

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I want a Web where I can use health care

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with privacy and where there's a lot

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of health data, clinical data is available

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to scientists to do research.

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I want a Web where the other 60 percent

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get on board as fast as possible.

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I want a Web which is such
a powerful basis for innovation

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that when something nasty happens,

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some disaster strikes, then we can respond

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by building stuff to respond to it very quickly.

NOTE Paragraph

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So this is just some of the things that I want,

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I mean, from a big list, obviously it's longer.

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You have your list.

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I want us to use this 25th anniversary

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to think about what sort of a Web we want.

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You can go to webat25.org

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and find some links.

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There are lots of sites where people

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have started to put together a Magna Carta,

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a Bill of Rights for the Web.

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How about we do that?

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How about we decide, these are, in a way,

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becoming fundamental rights, the right
to communicate with whom I want.

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What would be on your list for that Magna Carta?

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Let's crowdsource a Magna Carta

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for the Web.

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Let's do that this year.

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Let's use the energy from the 25th anniversary

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to crowdsource a Magna Carta

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to the Web. (Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you. And do me a favor, will you?

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Fight for it for me. Okay? Thanks.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)