25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, deserves our thanks for instigating this debate on what is surely the most transformative innovation of the past decades. I will focus on how the web is impacting just two things: research and education. Web archives, electronic journals, blogs and wikis have levelled the academic playing field globally and have democratised research.

The involvement of amateurs has been traditional in sciences such as botany, but the scope for citizen scientists is now much wider. In my subject of astronomy, for instance, there is so much data that the professionals cannot scrutinise them fully. It is now possible for eagle-eyed amateurs to access archives and themselves discover new planets or galaxies. Likewise, large datasets in genetics, healthcare and environmental science can be accessed anywhere. This openness can promote the progress of science, the understanding of it and trust in it. The web’s benefits to research spread beyond the sciences. For example, amateur scholars are reading and transcribing ships’ log books from the 18th and 19th centuries, unearthing fascinating social history as well as important data for climate scientists.

What about education? Here I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Giddens. The web may thankfully have a disruptive and benign effect on some unsatisfactory features of formal education, especially higher education. It will offer access to an ever-growing menu of outstanding courses—star lecturers and teachers will have a global reach. Traditional universities will survive only in so far as their faculties offer mentoring and personal contact with their students.

The Open University model—distance learning supplemented by a network of local tutors and mentors—surely has vastly more potential in the era of the web and smart phone than when it was founded back in the age of black and white TV. We can all freely access wonderful material on the OU’s Openlearn website, much prepared jointly with the BBC. In the United States, two organisations, edX and Coursera, disseminate MOOC courses developed by leading universities. The OU has set up a similar system called FutureLearn. I think all UK universities should seize the opportunity to widen their impact via the web. In particular, they should do this by supporting the Open University and by contributing content to FutureLearn rather than getting locked into one of the American platforms. The OU and the BBC have unrivalled reputations in their sectors. It is surely in this country’s interests that they should set the gold standard for web education and strive for a global reach.