How would the internet and the digital/social media experience have been different if Tim Berners-Lee had not insisted that it be decentralized and allowed to develop in an open fashion?
If Tim Berners-Lee had not insisted that the Internet be decentralized, it would be completely different than what we know as the Internet today. For starters, and possibly the biggest thing for a lot of people, is that there would likely be a fee just to use the World Wide Web. If this happened, we would likely see the Internet as something that only upper-class people used. It certainly wouldn’t be used in schools like it is today. If a sole company or person owned the internet, they would likely have been the wealthiest person in the world.
Also, the Internet we have is filled with every point of view for every topic we could ever think to research. If it was centralized, we would only get to see what the owner wants us to see. This means that we would only get to see one side of the spectrum. With this year being an election year, it seems to make sense to bring politics into this. We would likely only get to see things from one political side. The majority of people likely get their information on politics from the Internet, so they would only get to see things that benefit one political party, and things that only degrade the other political party. Had the Internet been centralized from the start, we would have a very biased Internet, which isn’t good for keeping a free mind.
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