互联网30岁了，发明人谈论互联网的弊端和解决办法

生日快乐，万维网。30年前，英国工程师蒂姆·伯纳斯-李爵士开创了让通讯即时廉价的网络媒介，催生了新一代内容浏览者，也由此启动了价值数十亿美元的业务，几乎颠覆了各行各业。

为了庆祝，伯纳斯-李写了一篇严肃的文章，反思了当代的互联网状况，认为在发展过程中已经失去了早期的价值。“网络已经变成公共广场、图书馆、医生办公室、商店、学校、设计工作室、办公室、电影院、银行等等。”他写道，但网络也充满了“机能障碍”。他呼吁政府、企业和用户团结起来，在问题更糟之前解决。

“虽然网络创造了机会，给边缘化群体发声机会，让日常生活更容易，但同时也给了骗子机会，让传播仇恨的人也能发声，导致各种犯罪更容易。” 伯纳斯-李写道，随后详细描述了出现障碍的三个领域：

蓄意的恶意，如国家操纵的黑客攻击、犯罪行为和在线骚扰。

系统设计不正当的激励措施，牺牲用户价值，例如基于广告的收入模式，在商业上奖励诱导点击和传谣。

善意设计无意中导致负面后果，如网络话语中出现的愤怒偏激态度。

1989年，伯纳斯-李在欧洲核子研究中心（CERN）工作时创建了万维网。他的想法是通过鼠标点击和新生的互联网，将连接不同文档的超文本或软件结合起来。1989年3月11日，伯纳斯-李向CERN提交了信息管理系统的建议，在分布式计算机上构建超文本系统，然后通过互联网连接。

就像人们总说的，后来的故事都写在历史里。近年来，网络带来的问题似乎已经超过益处，监管机构也召集Facebook和谷歌等巨头的高管研究解决问题。欧洲监管机构开始颁布法律控制数字内容的问题，一些美国政客呼吁解散强大的巨头。

在去年的网络峰会上，伯纳斯-李和WEB基金会组成了专门组织应对网络面临的挑战，为政府、企业和个人推出一系列须遵循的核心原则，防止互联网造成更具破坏性的影响。各项原则涉及通用访问、建立强大和互相尊重的社区以及保护隐私和个人数据等。

网络迎来30岁生日之际，伯纳斯-李的反思敦促与网络相关的人们接受各项核心原则。

“网络的本意是为每个人服务，只要联合起来我们就可以实现改变。”伯纳斯-李写道。“过去30年网络发生了巨大变化，如果认为未来30年里网络没法变得更好，就犯了失败主义和想象力匮乏的错误。但如果现在放弃将网络变好，网络也可以继续恶化下去。”（财富中文网）

译者：冯丰

审校：夏林

Happy Birthday, World Wide Web. It was 30 years ago that British engineer Sir Tim Berners-Lee effectively created the medium that has made communication instantaneous and cheap, spawned a generation of content surfers, launched many a billion-dollar business, and upended nearly every industry.

To celebrate, Berners-Lee wrote a somber reflection on where the web—which along the way lost its early capitalization—is today. “The web has become a public square, a library, a doctor’s office, a shop, a school, a design studio, an office, a cinema, a bank, and so much more,” he wrote, but it is also rife with “dysfunction.” He then called on governments, companies, and users alike to unite in combatting those problems before they get worse.

“While the web has created opportunity, given marginalized groups a voice, and made our daily lives easier, it has also created opportunity for scammers, given a voice to those who spread hatred, and made all kinds of crime easier to commit,” Berners-Lee wrote, before outlining each of the three areas of dysfunctions in more detail:

Deliberate, malicious intent, such as state-sponsored hacking and attacks, criminal behavior, and online harassment.

System design that creates perverse incentives where user value is sacrificed, such as ad-based revenue models that commercially reward clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation.

Unintended negative consequences of benevolent design, such as the outraged and polarized tone and quality of online discourse.

Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web while working as a fellow at CERN in 1989. His insight was to combine hypertext, or software that connected different documents with a mouse click, with the nascent Internet. On March 11, 1989, Berners-Lee submitted to CERN a proposal for an information-management system that would build a hypertext system on the distributed computers then linked by the Internet.

The rest, as they say, is history. In recent years, the web’s problems seem to have begun outweighing its benefits, with executives from giants like Facebook and Google summoned before regulators to address concerns. While regulators in Europe are beginning to enact laws to control the problems of digital content, some U.S. politicians are starting to call for breaking up the powerful giants.

At last year’s Web Summit conference, Berners-Lee and the Web Foundation, a group formed to address the challenges facing the web, unveiled a set of core principles for governments, companies and people to follow in an effort to curb the Internet’s more damaging effects. The principles concerned universal access, building strong and respectful communities, and protecting privacy and personal data.

Berners-Lee’s reflection on the web’s 30th birthday urged everyone involved with the web to embrace those core principles.

“The web is for everyone and collectively we have the power to change it,” Berners-Lee wrote. “Given how much the web has changed in the past 30 years, it would be defeatist and unimaginative to assume that the web as we know it can’t be changed for the better in the next 30. If we give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed u