Poll finds most Americans are on the web and happy with it.
The technology’s birthday is reckoned as March 12, 1989, the date that Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper proposing a system for managing information on the internet that would become the framework for the Web. He released the code for the system for free on Christmas Day the following year.
In 1995, only 14 percent of American adults were using the internet, according to previous Pew research. That exploded to 87 percent in Pew’s latest survey. The trend is similar for broadband use, which is nearly universal today.
In 2009 Sir Tim founded the World Wide Web Foundation which has a mission statement to “establish the open web as a global public good and a basic right, ensuring that everyone can access and use it freely”.
Its Web Index, first launched in 2012, measures how well different countries around the world are harnessing the benefits of an open and universal web, and last year he spoke of it having highlighted how the internet and social media were being used to expose wrongdoing in the world – leaving some governments threatened.
Speaking in November, he said: ”One of the most encouraging findings of this year’s Web Index is how the web and social media are increasingly spurring people to organise, take action and try to expose wrongdoing in every region of the world.
”But some governments are threatened by this, and a growing tide of surveillance and censorship now threatens the future of democracy.
sources: syrcuse.com, Huffington Post