We Are the Web, The Web is One – Celebrating Net Neutrality with Leslie Hall and Tim Berners-Lee

The web has been making links for it’s whole life time (remember this animated video on internet history?) The idea and act of webs and links long predates it, of course, and what we call the web is a baby in the eyes of the Web it came from – just a kid playing leap frog through a set of emerging networks, and lucky us we get to watch and click and make our own waves and predictions.

After many predictions, the US government annouced a landmark decision for net neutrality yesterday, making the 5 word Webby Award speech given by Tim Berners-Lee (Sir Inventor of the Internet) this week all the more electric:

What this will mean is for anyone to predict, for everyone to determine. My guess for today is that the next phase of this evolving web that includes us will involve the emergence of brand new landscapes and flavours of links, whole new sinews, as we learn to stretch our brand new muscle… The muscle of the many and the one.

On this occassion, let’s remember that this victory, like so many others in the short but valiant history of the Internet, represents the independent but well-networked labour and vision of artists and curators like the amazing Leslie Hall, Keeper of the Gems.