Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They
AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e
BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German
Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who
By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an
My Profile
Top News
Reuters top ten news stories delivered to your inbox each day.
Subscribe
You are here:
Home
>
News
>
Technology
>
Article
Home
Business & Finance
News
U.S.
Politics
International
Technology
Internet
Entertainment
Sports
Lifestyle
Oddly Enough
Environment
Health
Science
Special Coverage
Video
Pictures
Your View
The Great Debate
Blogs
Weather
Reader Feedback
Do More With Reuters
RSS
Widgets
Mobile
Podcasts
Newsletters
Your View
Make Reuters My Homepage
Partner Services
CareerBuilder
Affiliate Network
Professional Products
Support (Customer Zone)
Reuters Media
Financial Products
About Thomson Reuters
Web founder warns against website snooping
Sat Mar 14, 2009 6:13am EDT
Email | Print |
Share
| Reprints | Single Page
[-]
Text
[+]
By Jonathan Lynn
GENEVA (Reuters) - Surfers on the Internet are at increasing risk from governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities, the founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday.
Tim Berners-Lee, whose proposal for an information management system at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN 20 years ago led eventually to the World Wide Web, said tracking website visits in this way could build an incredibly detailed profile of who people are and their habits.
"That form of snooping I think is really important to avoid," he told an anniversary celebration at CERN.
Technology now being developed will make it easier to decide who can see material one posts on the Web, and in what circumstances. For instance people may not want prospective employers to see an album of holiday photos, he said.
Berners-Lee, a British software engineer who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said innovation on the World Wide Web was speeding up.
"The Web is not all done, it's just the tip of the iceberg," Berners-Lee said. "I am convinced that the new changes are going to rock the world even more."
One big change that is coming is "linked data," in which individual bits of data are machine-readable, not just the Web pages they appear on.
That would allow users to link readable data to similar data and manipulate it, for instance putting it in spreadsheets or plotting graphs. The sum of human knowledge would then grow exponentially in what Berners-Lee calls the Semantic Web.
Examples would be students accessing data from research institutes, or ordinary people getting hold of government data -- paid for by taxes -- to improve websites.
The system would allow investors to process the data contained in company press releases.
MULTIPLE DATA USE
People who put data on social networking sites such as Facebook, for instance tagging names on pictures, would also be able to use that data in other applications, for instance ordering a T-shirt on another website.
Berners-Lee said the future of the Web was on mobile phones, which already have more browsers than laptops do.
"In developing countries it's going to be exciting because that is the only way that a lot of people will actually get to see the Internet at all," he said.
When Berners-Lee wrote his proposal in March 1989, his boss at CERN, the world's biggest particle physics laboratory, scrawled "vague, but exciting" on the memo. Continued...
View article on single page
Share:
Del.icio.us
Digg
Mixx
Yahoo!
Facebook
LinkedIn
Next Article:
Cash-hungry U.S. states turn to Web to auction goods
Video
Video: American men opt for credit crunch snip
Blog: Your newspaper died? People don’t care
Commentary: The Dow at 36,000 and the end of history
More Technology News
Cash-hungry U.S. states turn to Web to auction goods
Apple to preview new iPhone software next week
Coating makes scratches on cars disappear
Kremlin loyalist says launched Estonia cyber-attack
Google to target ads based on online activity
More Technology News...
Video
The future of the World Wide Web
Play Video
More Video...
Editor's Choice
Slideshow
A selection of our best photos from the past 24 hours. Slideshow
Most Popular on Reuters
Articles
Video
"Vampire" unearthed in Venice plague grave
Madoff to appeal bail, net worth revealed
Chuck Norris sues, says his tears no cancer cure
45 percent of world's wealth destroyed: Blackstone CEO
Bank secrecy moves may force wealthy back onshore
Cash-hungry U.S. states turn to Web to auction goods
U.S. autos task force hires bankruptcy lawyer
Anna Nicole pumped full of drugs: Calif. official | Video
Ford CEO gets option to buy 5 million shares
Fast-growing Western U.S. cities face water crisis | Video
Most Popular Articles RSS Feed
Video
Business Update:Best week since Nov
U.S. men opt for credit crunch snip
Utada tries US market again
Prosecutors detail Anna Nicole case
Incest father Fritzl goes on trial
Australia oil spill anger
New boost for Somalia piracy battle
Sex industry flops in downturn
Showbiz Week
Cathay braces for turbulent times
Most Popular Videos RSS Feed
The Great Debate
Facebook's privacy snag
Eric Auchard
Social networking phenomenon Facebook has beaten out arch-rival and former market leader MySpace by most measures, except the one that pays the bills. Commentary
Follow The Great Debate on Twitter @reutersgr8db8
Reuters Deals
The global destination for corporate leaders, deal-makers and innovators
Knowledge to Act
Reuters.com:
Help and Contact Us |
Advertise With Us |
Mobile |
Newsletters |
RSS |
Interactive TV |
Labs |
Reuters in Second Life |
Archive |
Site Index |
Video Index
Thomson Reuters Corporate:
Copyright |
Disclaimer |
Privacy |
Professional Products |
Professional Products Support |
About Thomson Reuters |
Careers
International Editions:
Africa |
Arabic |
Argentina |
Brazil |
Canada |
China |
France |
Germany |
India |
Italy |
Japan |
Latin America |
Mexico |
Russia |
Spain |
United Kingdom |
United States
Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.