Last week there was a lot of attention paid to worries by the “inventor of the web” Tim Berners Lee about what was happening to his invention. Later he clarified things on his blog. He says people have always complained that there is a lot of junk on the web but he points to blogs and FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) networks are really good examples of techniques which can beat the junk. He says:

In a recent interview with the Guardian, alas, my attempt to explain this was turned upside down into a “blogging is one of the biggest perils” message. Sigh. I think they took their lead from an unfortunate BBC article, which for some reason stressed concerns about the web rather than excitement, failure modes rather than opportunities. (This happens, because when you launch a Web Science Research Initiative, people ask what the opportunities are and what the dangers are for the future. And some editors are tempted to just edit out the opportunities and headline the fears to get the eyeballs, which is old and boring newspaper practice. We expect better from the Guardian and BBC, generally very reputable sources)

Still, as he says at the end of his post:

fortunately, we have blogs. We can publish what we actually think, even when misreported.