We don't want this to be one medium reflecting on another from a safe distance. We want to bridge the gap. So we have decided to adopt a radical, open-source approach to the production process. We don't just want to observe bloggers from on high; we want to blog ourselves and get feedback and comment on our ideas.
And we have already taken the first step. Our presenter, the Guardian journalist and academic Aleks Krotoski, has just posted her first manifesto - about who holds power on the web - on our blog at bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution. This is a clarion call to web users all over the globe to tell us whether they think the web is the utopia it once promised to be - a sharing, open, level playing field - or whether, as Aleks argues, the hierarchy and inequality endemic in human society have spread to the web of today, populated by cliques and big brands.
The blog will be updated regularly with posts from Aleks and a number of guest bloggers, including Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales and musician and performing rights campaigner Feargal Sharkey. The online crowd now have an opportunity to tell us what they really think - and have a unique opportunity to influence the team's thinking.
From Producer Russell Barnes.
At the launch web-founder Tim Berners-Lee commented:
"When you use the internet it is important that the medium should not be set up with constraints," he said. The internet, said Sir Tim, should be like a blank piece of paper. Just as governments and companies cannot police what people write or draw on that sheet of paper so they should not be restricted from putting the web to their own uses."The canvas should be blank," he saidWhile governments do need some powers to police unacceptable uses of the web; limits should be placed on these powers, he said.
More here.
