On 6 Nov 2006, at 21:20, air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote:

Tim Berners Lee has provided me with some clarity.

"The web itself should be independent of the social... the first order, it should be not an institution but a completely blank piece of paper, a medium upon which society can do what it needs to do and what it wants to do." TBL

It's interesting to read this in light of his remarks around the launch of the institute: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6108578.stm ... in which he expressed his concerns that the web could be used for misinformation. If the web is and should be independent of society then surely it is society that needs to be fixed in this case not the web? (Personally I believe that there are influences in both directions). I agree of course that he is calling for something that we all know already exists - interdisciplinary study of the Internet and its (inter)-relationship to society - but surely anything he does to raise the profile of Internet or Web studies (in whatever form they take) can only be good for all of us. For what it's worth Sir Tim is one of my heroes - not only because he contributed to a great extent to the development of the web (which popularised the Internet for many people) but because he has consistently fought for open standards and clearly decided early on to use his position to attempt to ensure his work is used for the public good instead of merely cashing in as he certainly could have done. --- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone) --- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)