Computing and the net books

Books, Computing and the net books, Culture, Data journalism, Digital media, Internet, Media, Sách & Tri thức, Smartphones, Social etiquette, Social media, Society, Technology

Don’t argue with strangers… and 11 more rules to survive the information crisis

Feeling overwhelmed by divisive opinions, endless rows and unreliable facts? Here’s how to weather the data storm

We all live in history. A lot of the problems that face us, and the opportunities that present themselves, are defined not by our own choices or even the specific place or government we’re living under, but by the particular epoch of human events that our lives happen to coincide with.

The Industrial Revolution, for example, presented opportunities for certain kinds of business success – it made some people very rich while others were exploited. If you’d known that was the name of your era, it would have given you a clue about what kinds of events to prepare for. So I’m suggesting a name for the era we’re living through: the Information Crisis.

thanhtoong0
November 15, 2025

Books, Computing and the net books, Culture, Internet, Privacy, Sách & Tri thức, Society, Technology, Tim Berners-Lee

Why I gave the world wide web away for free

My vision was based on sharing, not exploitation – and here’s why it’s still worth fighting for

I was 34 years old when I first had the idea for the world wide web. I took every opportunity to talk about it: pitching it in meetings, sketching it out on a whiteboard for anyone who was interested, even drawing the web in the snow with a ski pole for my friend on what was meant to be a peaceful day out.

I relentlessly petitioned bosses at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), where I worked at the time, who initially found the idea “a little eccentric” but eventually gave in and let me work on it. I was seized by the idea of combining two pre-existing computer technologies: the internet and hypertext, which takes an ordinary document and brings it to life by adding “links”.

thanhtoong0
September 28, 2025