- copying info for your own use is always free;
- re-transmission is OK with proper credit to the author (unless the info is
explicitely labeled as public);
- re-sale of info is OK with permission of the author (unless public).
To back this up one could envisage:
- introducing standard labels (for each mime type) which indicate whether the
info is public, and if not, point to the author;
- making browsers "label-aware", so they can show the content of the label when
displaying text, pictures and movies;
- adopting the convention/rule that info cannot be copied without the label;
- (a bit more adventurous) setting up an ISPN (international standard person
number), similar to ISBN (international standard book number) and ISSN
(international standard serial number), which identifies a person, so that
references to authors in the labels are less dependent on changes in e-mail
addresses and home pages (as long as people keep their addresses in the ISPN
database up-to-date, of course).
= What practical solutions would you suggest for the growth of a multilingual
Web?
- At the author end: better education of web authors to use combinations of
modalities to make communication more effective across language barriers (and
not just for cosmetic reasons);
- at the server end: more translation facilities à la AltaVista (quality not
impressive, but always better than nothing);
- at the browser end: more integrated translation facilities (especially for the
smaller languages), and more quick integrated dictionary lookup facilities.
= What is your best experience with the Internet?
One night I heard on a foreign radio station a fragment of a song and the name
of a person, and using only the Internet I was able to:
- identify the person as the composer;
- find the title of the song;
- confirm that this was actually the song I'd heard;
- discover that it was part of a musical;
- find the title of the CD-set of the musical;
- buy the CDs;
- find the website of the musical;
- find the country and place where the musical was still being performed,
including when;
- find the phone number and opening hours of the booking office;
- get a map of the city, and directions to get to the theatre.
I could've done my hotel and flight bookings via the Internet too, but it wasn't
necessary in this case.
The only thing I could not do was the actual booking, because they didn't accept
Internet bookings from abroad at the time, for security reasons.
I had a wonderful time at the theatre, and I don't think this would've been
possible without the Internet!
= And your worst experience?
Nothing specific, but there are a few repetitive ones:
- unsolicited commercial e-mails;
- web pages full of ads;
- pages overloaded with irrelevant, time-consuming graphics;
- dead links.
*Interview of June 1st, 2001
= How much do you still work with paper?
I use paper a lot. All important documents are printed out, as they are a lot
easier to consult on paper (easier to browse, never a dead battery). I don't
think that this is going to change for quite a while.
= What do you think about e-books?
Still a long way to go before reading from a screen feels as comfortable as
reading a book.
= What is your definition of cyberspace?
For me the cyberspace is the part of the universe (including people, machines
and information) that I can reach from behind my desk.
= How would you define the information society?
An information society is a society:
- where most of the knowledge and information is no longer stored in people's
brains or books but on electronic media,
- where the information repositories are distributed, interconnected via an
information infrastructure, and accessible from anywhere, and
- where social processes have become so dependent on this information and the
information infrastructure that citizens who are not connected to this
information system cannot fully participate in the functioning of the society.