25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Hunt of Chesterton

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all speakers for their contributions to this debate. They have necessarily had to be short and sparky, but they have also been very informative. I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for securing this debate in the first place and for her excellent introductory speech, not only for its immediate and relevant content, but for giving us the historic context on the whole question of the web. I also thank her for her other work until recently as the UK’s digital champion.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, mentioned the need for everyone to have an online presence and indeed he gave us a small glimpse of his own. It is obviously useful to have that. I immediately rushed to my iPad to see what his looked like and I was much impressed by that. I also thought that I had better check out the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, so I looked immediately at her website and discovered that she had already put her speech up on the web. It is here, you can read it now. I think it was done afterwards, because it says,

“This is a speech I made in the House of Lords”,

and not “This is a speech I am about to make”. We are in the middle of a revolution both of our thinking and of our operations.

The noble Baroness ended by asking us: what kind of web do we want? That echoes what I was doing in researching for this debate by thinking about what people thought about the web. The best description that I came across was that the world wide web is humanity connected by technology—humanity, not just people. That is something that I will come back to.

There are those who would argue, and there is some merit in this argument, that the web is just another technology, although of course it is very exciting, different and distinctive in the way that it is applied. I suppose, like any other technology, the web can be whatever we make it; we can shape it and mould it. Most importantly, we need to keep in mind that we can use it to do something that I do not think any other technology has ever done, which is to connect every single person on earth—every single person. The web gives people the ability as users and contributors to improve their lives and communities or, in other words, to create humanity.

As we have heard, there are some 2 billion people currently on the web, mostly in the West and the developed nations but, as the internet becomes more connectable and more available through mobile, that will grow to an estimated 5 billion by 2020. That means huge opportunities and challenges, but it also means huge changes in the way in which we approach and think about the world.

Is the web just another technology? It seems to me that the things that it does that other technologies have not done are important, and we need to think about how we approach and engage with that technology. It does something to time. Whereas before we always had some time to reflect on an activity, people now report on and read about events as they occur. You get instant pictures and information. What happened to reflection?

The world wide web also localises. That seems like a contradiction in terms, but the way in which the web is organised so that any community can find a way of sharing information relevant to their interests and to their members and fellow citizens is an important aspect of what it does. At the same time, it is also universal, in that you have access anywhere in the world where you can get a connection—although that is not always possible, even in Britain.

The web also has a different way of focusing things. We have millions of communities, we all have multiple identities and those identities can be reflected on the web though our languages, our hobbies and our different natures. It allows those with shared interests to exchange resources in a way that has not been possible before. That is helped, of course, by search engines. Information has always existed; it has always been in repositories and difficult to access but now it is available. It is of variable quality, as we have heard, but it certainly is there if you can find it.

The web also provides links, both in real time and in a parallel way, across things. Many noble Lords will understand that if they have young children or grandchildren. My children seem to enjoy in a relaxing moment—although they say that they are working—lying on a sofa together, the three of them, interacting through texting and e-mailing while watching television and possibly reading something on their iPads. I cannot do that, but then multitasking has never been one of my strengths.

In that way, we are engaging by voicing opinions and raising issues in a way that has not been possible before. It is inexpensive, it is free—or virtually free—it is immediate and, if well looked after, it is durable. We have engagement and a chance to get involved in things that we would not otherwise have done. We also have the chance to raise opinions and, as people have said, to make a better fist of democracy, or participatory democracy, than has perhaps been possible before.

So there are huge opportunities but, of course, as many people have said, big challenges. There are, within those challenges, very substantial ethical ones. It will be interesting to listen to the Minister respond, if he can, to some of the very difficult questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and her ethical concerns about some of the issues about the web.

The good news is that the UK seems to have embraced the new technology in a terrific way. We have made economic use of the web and we buy and sell more goods online than any other country. I am not quite so sure about the fact that we have the highest number of Twitter users on the planet. I suspect, and have always thought, that this is largely due to my noble friend Lord Knight—he certainly confirmed in his speech that he has played a major part in that growth.

There are of course other important things, such as MOOCs, which we heard about. We heard how the Open University is developing this new technology, about the sort of digital services that we know are possible through the web and about the way in which an open government system can support these things.

Against that, we also hear that only 30% of small businesses are online, that there are alarming difficulties in getting access for the older parts of our population and that skills shortages are significant. We are also very worried about rural coverage. I read one statistic in my research which suggests that fewer than 0.5% of students choose computer science at A-level. That surely needs to go up, particularly for girls, for whom the figure is a fifth of that.

What comes next? The interesting thing is that most of the history of the web is ahead of us: it is a very young technology and very far from reaching its full potential as an agent of empowerment for everyone in the world. Web access for, perhaps, 4 billion or 5 billion people is an incredible opportunity, and new technologies will enable billions of people who are currently excluded to join in.

However, there are some big questions, such as access and skills, which I have mentioned. There is also a need for a change in the whole way in which we do business from physical interaction, although that will still be important, to one-click shopping. That is, of course, related to things such as transport and logistics—the physical movement of goods. How different it is now watching downloaded films compared to going to a cinema, particularly when you think about the change from reels of film to the way they are now broadcast or available on DVD. I have a particular concern about archiving material on the web. I am not sure that we are up to speed on that and wonder whether the noble Lord might respond to that, particularly about e-mails in government.

There are also points about privacy, which were well made initially by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in relation to children and also by the noble Lord, Lord Birt. We need to address some of the concerns that we have about the “dark side” of the web, as it has been called. The Prism and Snowden cases raise big questions. Perhaps most worrying for me, and an issue raised by other noble Lords, is what comes next in this area rather than what has already happened.

Other noble Lords raised questions that we also have to address, including those relating to intellectual property and whether that is up to date for the digital age. I suspect it is not. It needs much deeper and more effective work to get us ready for what is going to happen there. There is also the question about how we relate to the data that are stored about us. We need a mature conversation about that. As one noble Lord said, we are quite happy to give up considerable details about our personal data, including our credit card details, to commercial operators but we quibble about how much data government holds. That is very silly: we need to get this right and get the balance right. It may well be, as has been said, that we need champions—somebody who looks after information—but we cannot go on living in a parallel world on this.

The world wide web is a technology, but what it does and what it can achieve is really up to us, the users. Like all new technologies, the internet is often blamed for many of the problems in society. This is not the first time. One thinks of Shakespeare’s Globe and why it was situated outside the city, the penny dreadfuls in Victorian times and video nasties. These things are always blamed for society’s ills, but they are a feature of human endeavour and not of the technology itself. The Government have to come up with policies, although sometimes—including, I suggest, in this area—not doing something is almost as important as legislating. Particularly in relation to privacy and other issues, it should always be remembered that one person’s filter is another person’s censorship.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made some good points about the things we can do in our own House. My suggestion would be voting electronically: why do we have to troop through the Lobbies every time a vote comes, as we do currently? Surely we can do something differently with that. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, had a good idea, modelled on the Tobin tax, of raising funds for good purposes, which is something we should think about. It is probably too late but it is a good idea. We need to go back to the essential issues about inclusion, openness and transformational thinking about how we operate commercially and personally in a digital world, and how to promote humanity connected by technology—

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

We meet each other in the Division Lobby. If we do not and we all start to press buttons, are we saying that that is progress? One of the themes of today is that we have to balance humanity with technology. That seems to be balancing technology with technology.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That was too complicated for me. I am at the end of my peroration. I will see you later.

My conclusion is that the question for the Government is how to promote humanity connected by technology.