On 22 September 2026, Computer Weekly turns 60. To mark the milestone, we asked some of our friends – experts, parliamentarians, IT leaders and suppliers – for their perspectives on how tech has changed their lives over six decades. What’s changed the most for you since then?
At the start of the century, I moved from the west coast of Ireland to Eastern China. I was fresh out of university and barely out of my teens. Wide-eyed but with the confidence of youth, I packed my life into a rucksack, and landed in a country where I couldn’t read or speak the language, or use the eating utensils. After a few months of travel, I found myself in Shanghai – population 14 million – my new home.
Those were the days of dial-up internet. Back home I had mostly used it at university, where web access was slow, email addresses were too long, and online chat was still new.
I was studying politics and the internet was transformative. Buying a daily newspaper was, of course, an important part of student life – when you could afford it. Online news opened up, quite literally, an entire world of information and opinion.
My daily reading expanded to include global news on politics, economics, and culture. Looking back, it’s part of the reason I went to China – I was reading about the world, and I wanted to see it.
In Shanghai, I was working to prepare young people to study at English-speaking universities abroad. I was expected to help with their studies and to provide know-how to succeed in different societies outside of everything they knew.
To my surprise, a lot of that world was no longer as accessible as it had been back home. China was changing fast. People were moving to the cities and the economy was growing, but there were still significant state controls – especially of information.
Back then publications like The New York Times weren’t behind a paywall, but they were behind the Chinese government’s firewall. It didn’t have the sophistication of control which some governments now use. But my access to information was significantly curtailed by someone, somewhere, sitting in an office deciding what I could read. I bristled against that then and still do now.
Formative years
Those were formative years. I learned the language and how to use those eating utensils. I developed my love of workarounds – and found a public library with week-old copies of international newspapers. And I learned about what I value when it comes to people, governments, and technology.
“Nothing about the next 25 years of the internet is inevitable. Those of us with a voice should use it and should help others find theirs. Otherwise, we’re just letting someone, somewhere, sit in an office and decide what we can read”
Linda Griffin, Mozilla
Three things stick with me.
First, the openness of the internet is vital. The promise of the web was a space for what Tim Berners-Lee has called “intercreativity” – working to build things together. I think that’s even more important today.
Openness gives us access to information, ideas, and ways to collaborate. The web should be about public interest first – value is created where people can work together, not when we are squeezed into walled gardens.
Second, plurality is essential, and not only in the media. Without it, our online lives, our whole world, will be in the hands of a few companies – or even a few people. True innovation is rarely the work of one person and the belief that it is, hinders rather than helps, progress.
Third, regulation should not be a four-letter word. It’s difficult, for sure. But regulation itself is value neutral. What we need to understand are the values that underlie any regulatory intervention – and the values that that intervention will promote. As we begin the – so far quite messy – task to try and shape the role of AI on the web and in our lives, we need to move past lazy propaganda slogans like “innovation versus regulation,” and look for the best ways to promote long-term shared values.
Building blocks
This has been my work for much of my career, most recently at Mozilla. I joined because we are an internet pioneer. We’ve been working on browsers and open source since the 1990s. Today we make Gecko, one of only three major browser engines in the world, and the heart of Firefox. And that complex technology that almost everyone uses every day, but almost no one thinks about, matters.
These engines do more than display web pages. They decide what information we see, what information about us is seen, and who sees it. More and more they determine what role artificial intelligence plays in our lives. Browser engines, APIs, algorithms – these are the building blocks of a tech-infused world.
We must keep debating how we build those blocks and what we build with them. Nothing about the next 25 years of the internet is inevitable. Those of us with a voice should use it and should help others find theirs. Otherwise, we’re just letting someone, somewhere, sit in an office and decide what we can read.
I still have my rucksack. I’m more of a suitcase person these days, but the rucksack is a tangible reminder of my journey. It was unexpected, full of wonder, and world-altering.
That’s life in tech today – and if we work together, it can be life in tech tomorrow too.
Linda Griffin is vice president of global policy at Mozilla.
