Neutral Territory

The birth date of the Web is not nearly as relevant right now as its future survival, which is being threatened, according to Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist credited with putting the Web together from a batch of old and new ideas.

Berners-Lee has written an article about the future prospects of his creation, "Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality," published online last week by Scientific American. For healthcare IT people, it's well worth a read.

Berners-Lee took the opportunity to cheerlead for net neutrality, no matter which device or transmission system is used to afford the end user access to the Web. "A neutral communications medium is the basis of a fair, competitive market economy, of democracy, and of science," he said. "Debate has risen again in the past year about whether government legislation is needed to protect net neutrality. It is. Although the Internet and Web generally thrive on lack of regulation, some basic values have to be legally preserved."