Here at Mozilla we talk about “The Open Web” a lot. We talk about it all the time. It’s one of our causes. The word “open” appears seven times in our (very short) Manifesto. We have a proposal for a project called Drumbeat which aims to get people acting as “stewards of the open web”.
But what does “open web” actually mean?
Recently my coworker Jinghua asked me what the Open Web means in concrete terms. “Don’t give me abstractions or generalities”, she said, “tell me one specific reason that users should care.”
Daaaang. That’s a good question!
Is “The Open Web” a thing that exists now, or is it an ideal that we are trying to bring into existence? Is the openness or closedness of the web a binary distinction, or a sliding scale? How is it related to open-source software? Is it just a theoretical conceit of us web purists? Above all why is it something that users should care about?
There is not a single answer to this question; there are many answers.
Here’s one: the open web is a world where kids can teach themselves how to hack.
Here’s another: the open web is a world where people can write a subversive-but-legal tool to make U.S. Judicial records freely searchable. (Both blog posts by Atul Varma.)
I’ve been ruminating over some answers of my own; I’ll explain them in future blog posts.
September 16, 2009 at 2:17 am
The open web is like the public sphere, it is not controlled by any one, instead by us all, it is not controlled by corporations, but hold them accountable, it is a place and idea that allows true democracy to be discussed, debated and embraced.
September 16, 2009 at 2:21 am
[…] that’s one of my answers to Jinghua’s question. Why should I care about the open web? Because when this platform is weakened by the encroachment […]
September 16, 2009 at 2:24 am
Stephen: Great answer! But Jinghua is looking for less abstract and general, more concrete and specific reasons. How would you express your ‘public sphere’ concept in a way that makes it tangible to the average user?
September 16, 2009 at 2:38 am
valid point…though it’ll be hard to make it tangible, since one can’t touch the intertubes. I’ll work on the thought a bit more
September 16, 2009 at 7:58 am
Actually you can touch the intertubes, most of it is just UTP, coaxial cable, telephone-wires, glassfiber and racks full of servers. 🙂
All the other parts are just bits that you own, like a domainname, the data in a database, the software, the music, the photos, it’s just a bits. That’s were things start to get abstract.
Not that it helps to form any answer to the question at hand, so I’ll shut up about it.
September 16, 2009 at 6:42 pm
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September 30, 2009 at 1:30 am
Any answer that begins with, “The open web is a world…” is automatically nonsense. The web is not a world. The web is a web.
September 30, 2009 at 1:41 am
Also, the open web is a committee of two billion, and the results are about what you’d expect. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and yes, even the Firefox Corporation are innovating at an incredible rate.
The open web has had “columns” on its to-do list for over a decade.
October 1, 2009 at 8:30 am
I would explain the open web as having the lowest barrier to entry. It means that everybody can use and improve the web with little effort or legal trouble.
October 1, 2009 at 8:23 pm
The open web is a tool that does what you want it to do.
You can talk friends. You can talk with strangers.
You can join random projects. You can start random projects.
You can say whatever, do whatever.
It’s important because otherwise people won’t experiment with it. People experimented before.
They gave us airplanes.
Computers, with Youtube, Google, email, video chat and everything else.
I think you have heard about blogs from inside dictatorships. I assume you’ve read about Twitters impact recently.
Without an open web, those tools would never have been made.
Without closed borders, high control and no guaranteed freedom, the web is just decoration.
Now it’s a tool.
October 1, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Gaah…
“Without closed borders, […]” = “With closed borders, […]”
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