A triumph of hope over explanation: Tim Berners-Lee at the BCS

Sir Tim is not a great speaker; he generally gets three-quarters through a sentence before reeling it back in and ending it in a different and sometimes unanticipated way. Nevertheless it was interesting to watch him speaking, as he gesticulates and enthuses: the phenomenon he’s describing is exciting and does merit positive analysis.

The talk was really a sort of ‘state of the Web’ address. As such, Tim concentrated on describing a model that I think has been developed as part of the Web Science Research Initiative [shame that the stylesheets have inherited nasty W3C typography]. It sees progress on the Web as a repeating cycle of complimentary, local, small-scale technical and social problem-solving events that catch on and explode into web-wide improvements. It’s an inspirational and intentionally evangelical model, and one that TB-L believes the various web standards and frameworks will continue to support into the future. Let’s hope it does – unless something better emerges through the model, of course.

The talk’s online but you can’t currently get access unless you’re on the W3C’s access list. And perhaps Dave will blog it soon?

This talk was given as the BCS Lovelace Lecture for 2007. Thanks go to the BCS for hosting an really good – and free – event.

Subversion

I have just brought my web site, including – counterintuitively perhaps – this blog, under version control. Let’s hope it works.

Oh yeah, and have a look at the home page. Firefox should draw you a nice graphic ;-)

Integrity of UK voting to change for the worse?

Thanks to Open Rights Group (and, naturally, linked from Toblog) I was able to read the speech made by Sir Alastair Graham [.doc file], chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, to the Association of Electoral Administrators annual seminar on 27 February 2007. It’s not comforting to see that the body which is charged with making sure that the Government doesn’t do naughty things is worried that new policies will make the electoral system more vulnerable to abuse. Such policies would show that the Government doesn’t respect the wishes of those who vote – and in a democratic system that would be proof that it was no longer fit to govern.

ORG have spun the story a little to place the emphasis on the fact that part of the Government’s programme – the stated intention of which is to reduce voter apathy – is to run e-voting trials in some areas. ORG worry that, as in the USA, e-voting in the UK might use a computer system that seems to have been built with the intention of allowing interested parties to tamper with it. I agree wholeheartedly; but read the speech and you can see that the wider issue is the Government’s seemingly blithe determination to push aside any critical comments. In a stampede towards the new system, they’re not only ignoring suggestions about the integrity of computer technology, but about all the checks that might be used to discourage fraud – checks that have been adopted in Northern Ireland already. It looks a little like the frenzied behaviour of members of parliament who feel their tenures might be coming to an end. Ill judged, and regrettable.