The Boy Who Could Change the World Read Online Free Page A

running UI contests and doing usability tests and writing guidelines—but it’s an uphill battle because of these cultural things.
    What is the worst feature of the web?
    Another tough one—I like so much about the web!
    I guess I’d prefer if it protected privacy better. Between cookies and IP addresses, it’s too easy to track what someone is reading or saying.
    Also, I think it’s rather disgraceful how browser makers have hobbled the web by making it essentially read-only. Tim Berners-Lee’s original plan was to let the web be a collaborative space for people to work together to do great things, and web pages would be the trails left behind by their activities. Web browsers would have an edit button that you could click and modify or annotate any page; it would then upload your changes to the server if you had access, or add them to your personal annotation server if you didn’t. Creating a web page would be as easy as using a word processor, and it would all be built in to every web browser.
    While wikis have achieved some of this, there’s still a lot to be done. Tim calls them the “poor man’s” equivalent. For example, wikis aren’t WYSIWYG and make it too difficult to use links and other advanced features. And you can’t just see a typo and correct it in situ; you have to find the edit link, then find the typo again, then correct it, then find the save button. You can’t use images or spreadsheets or any of the things that have been common in word processors forever.
    And, as a result, the web is still limited in terms of who can publish their works and who can make a decent-looking and useful site. It doesn’t need to be that way.
    What would you like to say to all the people out there?
    Think deeply about things. Don’t just go along because that’s the way things are or that’s what your friends say. Consider the effects, consider the alternatives, but most importantly, just think.

Jefferson: Nature Wants Information to Be Free

    http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001115
    January 12, 2004
    Age 17
    Since many have said that my view of copyright and patent law is childish and held merely because I grew up with Napster and do not write for a living, I thought I’d investigate some more respectable views on the subject. And who better than those of our thoughtful third president, Thomas Jefferson?
    Judging from his letter to Isaac McPherson , Jefferson’s thoughts are thus:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  No one seriously disputes that property is a good idea, but it’s bizarre to suggest that ideas should be property. Nature clearly wants ideas to be free! While you can keep an idea to yourself, as soon as you share it anyone can have it. And once they do, it’s difficult for them to get rid of it, even if they wanted to. Like air, ideas are incapable of being locked up and hoarded.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  And no matter how many people share it, the idea is not diminished. When I hear your idea, I gain knowledge without diminishing anything of yours. In the same way, if you use your candle to light mine, I get light without darkening you. Like fire, ideas can encompass the globe without lessening their density.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Thus, inventions cannot be property. Sure, we can give inventors an exclusive right to profit, perhaps to encourage them to invent new useful things, but this is our choice. If we decide not to, nobody can object.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Accordingly, England was the only country with such a law until the United States copied her. In other countries, monopolies may be granted occasionally by special act, but there is no general system. And this doesn’t seem to have hurt them any—those countries seem just as inventive as ours.
    (I am not