If you want to choose the most influential and interesting living Unitarian Universalist, my money is on Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Not only is he a technological and conceptual pioneer, he also has high moral standards, as a BBC blogger Rory Cellan-Jones pointed out in today’s post:
The man who could have made a fortune out of his invention but chose instead to stay in academia has firm principles. He believes the web is all about open standards and interoperability and he is determined to be seen as above all commercial interests. We had asked him to choose a number of websites that illustrated the web’s growth — but he was adamant that he could not be seen to endorse any particular product, whether it be Google or Amazon or eBay.
Cellan-Jones also shares a map that Berners-Lee produced which depicts his conception of the growth of the World Wide Web (Link) — if the Web is allowed to evolve without being overwhelmed by Big Business and big Government. According to Sir Tim’s map, if we can just move past the Patent Peaks, Proprietary Pass, the Quagmire of ISP discrimination, and Censorship Swamp we might just end up in the beautiful Sea of Interoperability near the lands of Harmony, Efficiency, and Understanding. It’s one of the best visions for the future of the Web that I’ve seen in some time.
I’ll do everything I can to fight to keep the internet available for all.
Certainly a cool map, fun to see it include ye olden days of bitnet. Maybe I am just a jaded sysadmin, but having seen Ward Cunningham’s “we don’t need to lock anything down” wiki implement security I see an endless number of marshes to wade through as opposed to a promised land that will ever be reached. With so many people hooked in there will always be folks interested in ruining the party.