Dries Buytaert

Last week, I published an opinion piece on CNN featuring my thoughts on what is wrong with the web and how we might fix it.

In short, I really miss some things about the original web, and don't want my kids to grow up being exploited by mega-corporations.

I am hopeful that increased regulation and decentralized web applications may fix some of the web's current problems. While some problems are really difficult to fix, at the very least, my kids will have more options to choose from when it comes to their data privacy and overall experience on the web.

You can read the first few paragraphs below, and view the whole article on CNN.

I still remember the feeling in the year 2000 when a group of five friends and I shared a modem connection at the University of Antwerp. I used it to create an online message board so we could chat back and forth about mostly mundane things. The modem was slow by today's standards, but the newness of it all was an adrenaline rush. Little did I know that message board would change my life.

In time, I turned this internal message board into a public news and discussion site, where I shared my own experiences using experimental web technologies. Soon, I started hearing from people all over the world that wanted to provide suggestions on how to improve my website, but that also wanted to use my site's technology to build their own websites and experiment with emerging web technologies.

Before long, I was connected to a network of strangers who would help me build Drupal.