Over sixty years ago a man began a speech with “This just might do nobody any good.” and in a way he was right.
Not that pointing out the things Edward R Murrow pointed out in his speech, now famously known as the ‘Wires and Lights Speech’, did anyone harm. He pointed out a great many things about the then-new industry of television that needed addressing. He drew attention to several things that were wrong, that needed review, that would be better if done in a different way or that could be cause for consternation. He explained why he was concerned, and what direction he thought the television industry was taking, as opposed to what direction he felt it should take, and why that should be as well. Murrow was long dead by the time I was even born, let alone had heard of this speech or its importance, but it is still important today. (And it seems I’m not the only one who thinks so.)
I’ve been thinking about this speech a lot lately. Primarily because I’m looking for my first job in web development, I’m directing my career in the field, and I get to have my first shot at what that means. What goals do I want to achieve, other than of course the goal of paying my bills with a little extra for fun? I feel like I barely thought about it at all when I was first asked the question: I want to do environmental work, I want to work in ed-tech, I want to work in accessibility and make the internet safer and better and available to all. I was just old enough that I had some years of living in a world without internet before the World Wide Web came into being even in its first, very limited incarnation. So it seemed miraculous to me when we were able to reach across the world and learn new things, communicate with people we would have a hard time reaching before, or even knowing of their existence in more than an abstract fashion. Obviously Ireland or Russia or Brazil has universities and professors who teach at them, but with the World Wide Web a girl could find that university’s site and email those professors and ask, what do we know about ancient kings? This language? That traditional dress?
I still feel that way about the internet, even though it’s gotten quite a bit more dangerous in the years since. In many ways and along many axes (emotional, mental, even physical) the dangers on the internet have multiplied exponentially. But as we develop new technology and new software to pair with it the benefits of the internet have also grown. And along with both, the weight of our responsibility as those who are the architects of the modern web.
I’m still fumbling around the edges of what I think my responsibility is, as someone who can code. To make my web pages as accessible as possible, definitely, and I’m expanding on the knowledge of the code for that every day. Other aspects of accessibility, lean coding and designing cleanly but without unnecessary animation or components, I already have ingrained in me from the era of 28.8k modems. It can be difficult, I think, when one knows how to code and bend portions of the internet in the general direction of one’s will, to remember that not everyone has a fiber connection and a fast computer. Not everyone has a computer at home, or an internet connection. And if I’m going to code something that I want to reach even people with limited or no computer ability, if I can imagine someone might have to go to a library to use my website, I have to keep that in mind. And what else is my responsibility? To be careful with my language? To put nothing out there that doesn’t have some use? What defines ‘use’? Should the internet move towards being primarily functional and educational, and how much room do we reserve for frivolity? Who defines frivolity? Who decides what is worthy of a strong presence on the internet, and what can be left to bitrot?
I don’t have any of these answers. I know they are questions with increasing urgency, especially with the advance of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. There are deep environmental and ethical concerns around this field, and arguments have been made that while blockchain technology and the so-called Web3 may have uses they have not yet proven that these uses cannot be better and more safely served with other, existing tech. And this is a debate that I feel we will have again and again, as innovations iterate and grow our idea of the web as it stands now into something new. It’s not done growing. It may have only reached its angry adolescence.
“This just might do nobody any good,” I mutter, typing these words into a blog entry. This is a debate we will have again and again, those of us who care and want to be intentional in our actions building the modern web. Many more of us will shrug and walk away, because we don’t care. We’re in this to move fast and break things, to develop, to find out what we can do next. And there’s something to be said for being unrestrained in one’s curiosity. But for me, personally, it must always be tempered by an effort to do no harm. I want to bring the wonderful feeling of having the boundaries of one’s world suddenly expanded beyond belief to everyone. And it’s up to them whether or not to use it; I just want everyone to have the opportunity, in safety.