We also requested that they reflect upon the web collectively and remark upon its high and low points throughout the past 25 years. While the advent of the web and its underlying technologies have resulted in the most concentrated period of innovation in history, many internet pioneers believe that a lack of awareness of what could be possible online stunted the web’s growth in its early years. They also identify trade offs and contradictions in some of the web’s most prominent features, such as the ability to unite humanity and provide a platform for further divisions.
Click through to read remarks from some of the web’s earliest entrepreneurs and learn what has surprised them about the trajectory the web has taken.
BIZ STONE
Co-founder of Jelly Industries, Medium and Twitter
What are you most proud of, with regards to your contributions to the internet?
“The idea that got me into the business of being an internet entrepreneur was that of giving voice to the voiceless. It started with blogging in 1999 -- the idea that people could make web pages without knowing how to code. At Google, I worked on the Blogger team, then founded Twitter and later Medium. I’m most proud of giving voice to the voiceless and elevating the freedom of speech to a basic human right.”
What do you wish you could go back and change?
“With Twitter, specifically regarding our early technical approach, if there was a right way of doing something and a wrong way of doing it, we chose the wrong way an absurdly disproportionate amount of the time. It would be easy to say I wish I could go back and change Twitter’s early technical approach to one that was designed to scale from the beginning. However, because of the way everything worked out, I wouldn’t want to go back and change anything because it worked out positively beyond my wildest dreams.”
What do you think is one of the best moments in internet history?
“Blogging really was a revolution -- it was also a revelation and an enlightenment. Blogging paved the way for Twitter, and Twitter paved the way to a new standard for freedom of speech, transparency and the speed of information flow.”
What do you think is one of the low points in internet history?
“It seems there cannot be good without bad. One of the low points in internet history is the emergence and existence of cyberwarfare -- something that the world needs to take seriously right now as a legitimately dangerous threat to human lives and society. We need to bring more light into the darkness. I believe the fundamental goodness of humanity will prevail. I believe the reason we are so connected is so that we can help each other -- this is the motivation behind my newest pursuit, askjelly.com, a new breed of search engine that prompts people to help one another in this incredibly hyperconnected age.”
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