Buckle Up! We've only just begun ...

On October 29, 1969: The first “packet” was sent via the first connection between two computers - from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute - on the ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet. (Vint Cerf)

In 1974: The design of the Internet was released when Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn published “A protocol for packet network intercommunication.” (Cerf and Kahn)

In December 1991 the World Wide Web was born and made accessible via the Mosaic Browser in 1993.

The world had changed and, according to Jürgen Schmidhuber at the recent 2025 Web Conference, the Age of the (Smart) Machine had begun.

In 2025 researchers at Anthropic were starting to study “model welfare” - the idea that A.I. models might soon become conscious and deserve some kind of moral status. (New York Times)

In July 2024, to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of The Internet, an event was held at the Royal Society in London.  The event was co-organised by the Royal Society and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and supported by the Web Science Trust, People-Centered Internet, Digital Enlightenment Forum, The Digital Humanism Initiative, and the Web Science Institute, University of Southampton, UK.  This was the first collaborative event presented by this group of organisations and able to bring together many of the key individuals who had co-created the technologies underpinning the world of Cyberspace.

The day began with a ‘workshop’ at which a group of around 40 of these individuals were asked to imagine the internet in 50 years time.  Apart from their stories the most fascinating outcome of these few hours was that, apart from or two ‘out there’ ideas, the group was unable to imagine a world beyond Large Language Models and Chat GPT.

The afternoon public session consisted of a series of panels which discussed the history of what had been created in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and reflected on the promise of free, collaborative and accessible knowledge and a New World free of so many of the constraints of the past.

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us.You have no sovereignty where we gather. (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace  John Perry Barlow, 8^th February, 1986)

The big question is - given this promise - what has actually been achieved? And what has not?

There were so many questions which did not arise, there were so many ideas already articulated in Science Fiction such as The Nexus Trilogy, the Three Body Problem,  The Foundation Series and Black Mirror which were ignored, and to be honest I felt there was precious little courage or use of creative imagination.  

I again saw this at the recent 2024 Web Science Conference in Stuttgart (see the Proceedings) and the 2025 Web Conference in Sydney. Beyond Large Language Models and AI Agents there was little else.  Nor did anyone challenge the current advertising driven business models or the notion of ‘free’'.

There were some comments at the Royal Society which I had not heard before that perhaps it might have been better if the Web had not been given away for free ... the benefits of hindsight.

On reflection this has reinforced my opinion that we humans are approaching an historic Event Horizon beyond which we cannot currently think or conceive, let alone imagine.  And the technologies which are driving this are owned and are being developed by multinational companies with scant oversight or accountability.  

According to The Economist Magazine the United States is now about to be run by the PayPal Mafia, the Prime Minister of Great Britain is most likely being advised by ChatGPT, and popular AI tools are now introducing advertising. So, frankly, it seems to me like ‘same old same old’. I think what has been achieved thus far is that Cyberspace is now predominantly seen to be a space where there is an expectation of unfettered innovation in order to serve profits and corporate greed.

One of the key elements in all human activities is trust.

It’s helpful think of trust like energy: It doesn’t get destroyed; it changes form. Local trust flowed sideways, directly from person to person. Institutional trust flowed upwards to leaders, experts, referees, and regulators.Distributed trust changed the flow back sideways but in ways and on a scale never possible before.Now, with the rapid advancement of AI, autosapient trust will flow through an AI agent. (Rachel Botsman)

Trust is the foundation of how we use our technologies and therefore at the heart of how they must be framed and governed.

AI is the first technology that can make decisions by itself, can invent new ideas by itself, can learn and change by itself. It is an Agent and not a tool (printing press, atom bomb). The AI can decide by itself which story to create, which story to promote.  The only way to build a benign society in the age of AI or anything else, is with institutions.”  (Yuval Noah Harari)

For far too long the scientists and technologies have builtf or the sake of building, solved technical challenges because of the challenge itself and ignored the broader social issues.

My whole life I never worried about anything but science. That night I started to worry about the ethical and societal implications of our work. (Rafael Yuste interview).

As our technologies become ever more pervasive and intelligent we need to creatively develop new ideas for the socio-technological systems which envelop them.

We were solving a technical problem. We should have had socials cientists involved from the outset.  We started with the hope of a marketplace of ideas and we’ve ended up with a mob in the agora - we need to do something about the mob. How do we get back to the marketplace? A place for sharing and growing? (Vint Cerf at Royal Society)

This is what Web Science is, and always has been focused on whether it be the Internet, the Web, Machine Learning, Generative AI or whatever comes next.

I was once told that Web Science is a boundary object – something that is both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites.

It requires a huge degree of humility, tolerance, patience and wisdom to accept that people see the world differently.

Wisdom is not something you want to apply goals to. (Alan Kay)

When we know we’re in for a wild ride it’s worth trusting in that wisdom and taking the time to allow new ideas to emerge, regardless of how ridiculous or challenging they may be.  Some will prove valuable, others won’t, but all must be considered.  

The future of the factory will be one man, one dog. The man to watch the dog, the dog to make sure the man doesn’t mess with all the robots. (Warren Bennis)

Some useful links:

The UN Global Digital Compact

The Royal Society report – The Impact of Social Media on Society