I’m Paula Santolaya, reporting live from SANTOLIVE in my virtual reality. Have comments, questions, or suggestions? Post them in the comments section or email me at info@santolive.com.

It was in 1969 when, in the middle of the Cold War, the military intelligence of the United States of America created ARPANET, a top-level domain used exclusively to maintain communications in case of a Russian attack.

Twenty years later, the British engineer Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW): «a free, open and permissionless space for all humanity to share knowledge and ideas.» Three decades have passed since its appearance and everything seems to indicate that the Web is facing the 30-year crisis because, according of its creator «it has lost its way and many things have gone wrong.«

Indeed, half of the world’s population does not have Internet at home and those who really are connected feel that their freedoms and rights are unprotected due to data leaks, privacy issues or fake news. Scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, which used data from Facebook accounts in favor of the electoral campaign of Donald Trump or the Brexit referendum, have generated a feeling of insecurity and distrust among Internet users.

This situation has brought matters to Berners-Lee’s head, who has launched a campaign to ask for the collaboration between governments, companies and citizens in order to guarantee universal Internet access, respect users’ private lives and avoid bad practices that endanger human rights.

The Web, as we know it, is under threat. The challenge now is to educate citizens in the correct use of the Internet and social media, especially the youngest ones, not in vain are the potential users of the technological future that is already a part of our present.

And for the curious, this is the link that leads to the first web site of the Internet history: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser/