The world wide web is 15 years old and still in its technological adolescence. Its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, worries that "bad things" could happen and the web could be used to spread misinformation and support undemocratic practices.
Berners-Lee is right is worrying about the future of the net. What is critical is not simply worrying about spread of "bad things", but finding a healthy balance between the benefits and risks of the web.
Pervasive innovations or products tend to come with such concerns. The history of coffee offers a pertinent allegory. The beverage spread rapidly in the Arabian peninsula and within decades it started to threaten the established social order.
In 1511 a viceroy and inspector of markets in Mecca, Khair Beg, outlawed coffee consumption and coffeehouses. He relied on Persian expatriate doctors and local jurists who argued that coffee had the same impact on human health as wine.
But the real reasons lay in part in the role of coffeehouses in undermining his authority and offering alternative sources of information on social affairs in his realm. His masters in Cairo, however, were not amused. They castigated the scientific basis of the claim and ruled that nobody would be denied access to heaven because he drunk coffee.
Coffee's debut into Europe was greeted with opposition, mostly inspired by interest to protect wine, beer, ales and other beverages. Italian wine merchants were alarmed by the spread of coffee, a drink that had early been confined to university premises, especially Padua. Efforts by Italian bishops and priests to argue that coffee consumption violated religious law continued to be ignored. An appeal to the pontiff became the final avenue to excommunicating coffee. But upon sipping it, Pope Clement VIII reportedly declared: "Why, this Satan's drink is so delicious ... it would be a pity to have the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it and making it a truly Christian beverage."
In a 1674 French crusade to defend the consumption of wine, it was argued that when one drinks coffee: "The body becomes a mere shadow of its former self; it goes into a decline, and dwindles away. The heart and guts are so weakened that the drinker suffers delusions, and the body receives such a shock that it is as though it were bewitched." Coffee was widely blamed for causing impotence and other maladies. Its promoters heralded its virtues and debates about its safety still continue to be the subject of mock courts today.
In 1675 England's King Charles II issued a declaration "for the suppression of coffeehouses", charging that coffeehouses were the source of malicious and scandalous statements aimed at defaming the king and undermining public order. He directed that coffeehouses be shut down. His appeal to national security was partly a cover to protect tea interests.
History is full of examples of technological persecution. Unless we manage the use the web, there is a risk that those threatened by its impact of the established order will seek to restrict its use. It is in this respect that we should welcome Berners-Lee's efforts to promote a better understanding of the relationships between the internet and society. It is through such work that we can hope to find ways to balance between the benefits and risks of the web and protect it from political attacks and allow it to mature.