Open Standards drive innovation

I’ve recently read a great article by Tim Berners-Lee, titled “Long Live the Web“, about why the web is crucial for the continuation of our liberty.
It’s a six-page article; if you have time I’d recomment reading it; this is a commented abstract of my favourite paragraph.

Definition of an Open Standard:

• A committed expert involved in the design;
• Widely reviewed;
• Available for free to be viewed and used;

Open Standards drive innovation because they underlie the diverse richness of the web.
Opting for not using Open Standards means building a(nother) closed world, that is far less in richness, diversity and innovation compared to the whole open web.

Universality is the most important design principle underlying the web.
Despite universality could seem an anstract concept, it goes to the basic standard of the web: the URI puts in practice the principle that anything should be identified by a string of characters, and this is key for universality.

HTML + URI + HTTP can be read as Decentralization
Standards are there because anybody can use them and decide independently to publish some content on the web, without asking anybody to do it or to give her permission of doing it.
And because Hypertext allows linking between two URIs, anybody can enter the universal space of sites on the web.

So anybody can build a site and put data into it; but there it comes Isolation, because most of the times data are constrained in a site like in a silo.
De facto: URIs identify pages and not single pieces of information.
Connecting data, pieces of information, on the web, could bring us to build huge systems of federated information, that can be crucial for innovation in many fields of our society.