Writing in Scientific American recently, Tim Berners-Lee highlighted the threat that various walled gardens pose to the Web. He mentioned social networks walling off information posted by their users as well as Apple’s preference for proprietary protocols and the emergence of smartphone apps.
Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected.
Today, Apple decided to give us all a quick taste of where walled gardens can lead:
Apple has apparently banned an iPad-based magazine from its online store – because the titled focuses on Google’s Android platform.
Walled gardens are shady things indeed.
And now I am without a phone. That’s not strictly true, I have a phone but the SIM card belonged to my employer so I have had to return it, along with the (spare) phone with which it was supplied.
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