Thank you to The Observer for this thoughtful review.

“Berners-Lee is clear-eyed about the benefits and the dangers. This Is for Everyone contains some very sharp thinking about what we need to do now.”

We must fight for the web we want.

https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/nick-clegg-and-tim-berners-lee-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-internet

Nick Clegg and Tim Berners-Lee: the battle for the soul of the internet

The ex-deputy PM toes the line of his former Meta paymasters, while the web's inventor shares his vision of a utopian digital future

The Observer
@timbl looking forward to reading it!
@timbl Just ordered my copy of This is for Everyone! Always appreciated the story of the influence of “Enquire Within Upon Everything”

@timbl

Nick Clegg: "Clegg devotes two paragraphs to Myanmar, acknowledging 'serious mistakes' but explaining that actually it is technically very difficult to translate Burmese."

Maybe if they involved locals/native speakers a bit more, that would have helped.

@timbl
Nick Clegg strikes me as one of those people who seems quite intelligent on the surface but is devoid of perspicacity deep down inside.
He was taken to the cleaners by both David Cameron and Mark Zuckerberg.
His destiny was to become a prop and then a window ornament.

@timbl I am wary that too many of us use "internet" as a noun without defining what that noun means.

To many of us who were building the net in the 1965-1995 period we see "internet" as a packet switching system that moves IP packets from hither to yon.

These days many people think "internet" means a collection of applications that interwork (to a degree) with one another, without regard for the underlying means of data transport, much less whether that mode is elegant or a jury rigged tangle.

It is my assertion that we can't really talk about internet policies or health without first defining what we mean by "internet".

Our policies and concerns about the packet switching mesh are different than our policies and concerns about webs of interoperating applications.

(And I will, of course, remind people that our growing walls of security, although good, are at the same time making it harder for us to manage the net to detect problems, isolate those problems, and deploy repairs.)

@karlauerbach

I've thought for quite a while that Doctorow or someone needs to update "enshitification" and rebrand it as "enappification"

People simply have no concept of the Internet as transport between autonomous destinations

Everything is "an app" "for that" on their phones

And too much very bad mischief is simply one fat-fingered mis-tap away from identity theft and device compromise

I could go on and on, but an entire generation is simply lost and vulnerable sitting ducks

cc @timbl

@FinchHaven @karlauerbach @timbl the basic concepts of even a web address or a file location are getting further from everyday understanding all the time. Everything is via app or QR code. It's pretty difficult to access the file system on my android, even to find something I downloaded.
@FinchHaven @karlauerbach @timbl and of course you have to bypass all sorts of popups and redirects to the app store to access things like Facebook messenger or TikTok without the app - because where's the fun in providing a service if you can't scrape data off everyone's phones while you do it?!
@timbl
I would love to sit Mr Clegg down with, say, a picture of an M16 next to one of an MRI machine and say “let’s talk in a bit more depth about this moral neutrality of technology”. Yeah of course you could use either instrument to good or ill end. But there are certain assumptions built into the design of each.
@timbl
thought you may want to know but i think html is a programming language…
here is some code about it i committed a while ago
(took me like hour or 2 to code whole of it, not a big site. basically html, that's it, just html… raw, no styles/scripts. works in lynx. like first page on internet you made) :
https://hacknorris.codeberg.page/html_data_save/@main/main.html
what do you think about it? yep it does save data… or more - you browser saves (site itself doesn't give big F about it, it's basically 3 files…)
@timbl I thought your Newsagents podcast piece was very considered. We know what is wrong with the web - but it's certainly a case of introducing control to make it a kinder, less toxic place.