
Vint Cerf: Introducing the People-Centered Internet Newsletter - GuiA
http://peoplecentered.net/newsletter/june-2016/
======
codemac
For those who don't know what their goals are:

Desirable properties of the People-centered Internet:

1\. Complete universal Internet coverage that enables functionality that is
otherwise unreachable or ineffective

2\. The Internet is affordable, open, available and accessible to all

3\. Fosters digital literacy, local content in local language to achieve
widespread usage and increased value to people, families, communities and
countries

4\. The system achieves a level of trust that meets the users’ expectations of
affordability, privacy, safety

5\. The quantity and quality of educational and information services is
increasingly available to families and communities

6\. Anyone can contribute to improvement of the utility of the global
Internet.

7\. Personal information in the digital environment is protected by law and
controlled by the individual

[http://peoplecenteredinternet.org/](http://peoplecenteredinternet.org/)

~~~
gue5t
There won't be any ads.

This may not have been explicitly listed, but a user-centric communication
medium does not perpetrate psychological warfare against its users and reward
distracting them, stalking and profiling them, or exploiting their naïvete. It
empowers them by giving them access to information _on their terms_. This is
definitional.

~~~
krapp
If users choose to advertise, a user-centric communication medium would allow
them to do so. To ban advertisements outright would be censorship.

~~~
eevilspock
He didn't say "ban" much less "ban outright", did he? The list is "desirable
properties".

I agree with his characterization of advertising, and that to be "people
centric", there would be no ads _by definition_.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773)

~~~
krapp
I'm not a huge fan of advertising on the web, I think it's doomed to failure.
But I disagree that it's desirable to be rid of advertising.

And I only say _that_ because I believe freedom of expression - and that
includes commercial expression - is sacrosanct. In my opinion, a truly "people
centric" platform allows my right to serve whatever I want (within the bounds
of the law) to supercede anyone else's personal ethics.

~~~
eevilspock
Just because freedom allows you to say most anything doesn't mean all those
things are consistent with freedom. One can protect the KKK's right to free
speech while simultaneously saying that their speech is undesirable and
inconsistent with freedom.

The same principle applies to "people centric".

I think you keep inserting "ban" into what you're responding to when no one is
saying that. Try rereading the article and the parent comments without that
bias.

------
unfocused
I read his introduction, and glanced over the first 3 articles.

It's written in a very heavy "government corporate" language. To be honest,
who is the audience that this letter is supposed to reach?

People that can't read "government corporate" language are not going to even
attempt to read it. It's a shame really because the message is a good one, but
they need to change how they write if they don't want their message lost.

------
jacquesm
Is he still working for Google?

~~~
pgrote
Yes. Chief Internet Evangelist.

[http://research.google.com/pubs/author32412.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/author32412.html)

~~~
just_observing
"4\. The system achieves a level of trust that meets the users’ expectations
of affordability, privacy, safety"

This is Google. I assume they anticipate low expectations.

~~~
mikekchar
To be honest, like all very large organisations, I suspect there are many
different points of view within Google. For example, Google is slowly working
on End-to-End [1].

People tend to expect that businesses run to the lowest common denominator: if
it is profitable, then they will do it. This is demonstrably false, though.
Most companies avoid the most egregious crimes in our society, and others
actually take moral stands on various issues (Lush comes to mind [2]). But of
course, no matter what, it's always going to be a nuanced issue (see the
comments in the second link to see some people's negative reactions).

Somewhat like Lush, Google has potential to improve the situation and position
itself as "the least bad" option. The reality of the situation is that while
privacy is very important, almost nobody wants to be completely private. They
_want_ to advertise things about themselves -- even to the whole world (see
Facebook). Possibly they even want to lie about themselves, but this is still
compatible with selling them things to help them sustain their fantasy.

From the perspective of targeting ads, it seems to me to be much more
effective to target the "public persona" that people wish others to see rather
than the true private person. Building better tools that allow someone to say,
"This is how I wish the world to see me" is much, much better than trolling
through their personal information and patching up a profile that nobody
wishes to expose. And for the few people who wish to be an informational black
hole? You weren't going to sell them anything anyway.

P.S. I understand that Google and others have a very long way to go to make
this kind of thing a reality. It's just that I don't see it as being
antithetical to their business goals.

[1] - [https://github.com/google/end-to-end](https://github.com/google/end-to-
end) [2] - [https://uk.lush.com/article/lush-ethical-
company](https://uk.lush.com/article/lush-ethical-company)

------
jimhefferon
Does anyone have any idea what this means? He is a smart person, so I assume I
am just being dense.

~~~
pgrote
My take is focusing on internet related innovation that focuses on bringing
them to users. Things like AI and 3D printing are typically out of the reach
of normal internet users, so the goal is to make it available to them.

------
daly
People centered? So will we see a list of locally hosted websites available
using peer-to-peer, open source, end-to-end encrypted software? Or will we see
the usual global "data collection" through centralized services?

There used to be "bulletin board systems" (BBS) software that was point-to-
point, ran on local systems, and was fully distributed. Anyone could customize
their own BBS. Lists of available BBS were circulated. It was the ultimate
people-centered architecture.

------
meeper16
It's one of the most transparent newsletters I've seen in a while.

