The rise of the web's digital elites

Ahead of a major series on the BBC about the impact of the web, presenter, social scientist and journalist Aleks Krotoski asks whether the web has already missed its greatest chance.

The web is an extraordinary innovation, with the greatest potential to usher in social change since the invention of the printing press or the steam engine.

Built upon a technology that is apolitical, unregulated and decentralised, it empowers everyone - men, women, children - to be creators of information, rather than passive consumers.

It is also an enormous library of global consciousness, a digital collection of human knowledge from the past and the present and presented in an easy-to-access format.

As a result, we now have the unprecedented power to create our own truth, and share it with everyone in the world. It has ushered in an equality of access that we have never seen before.

But has its potential as a great leveller for the whole world already passed?

'Utopian society'

Twenty years ago, the web was colonised by a group of early adopters who believed that the ideal society was equal - every person had a right to get involved, there should be no hierarchy, and rules would be mutually determined for the common good.

People like American writer Stewart Brand, critic Howard Rheingold, and the Grateful Dead's John Perry Barlow believed the sanctity of the individual was superior to that of the nation state, and that contact with people from across the globe would be enough to solve the world's ills.

Howard Rheingold was an early adopter of the web

These people, many of whom we tracked down for the series in the idealistic haven of San Francisco, had spent more than a decade playing around with alternative, non-physical communities in cyberspace on the proto-internet.

The early communities they established, like the online forum the Well had parallels with other Free Towns in the "real" world, many of which had suffered when the reality of poorly-defined regulations degenerated into exploitation and lawlessness.

But the idealistic web pioneers maintained that the new digital frontier would provide a fertile, intellectual ground on which to create a freer, utopian society.

But as we found as we were speaking to many of these pioneers, history has had a different plan for the web.

The pioneers' loose approach to social behaviour online has clashed with the essential features of our nature - our desire to take control, to own and to profit.

Implicit inequalities emerged early, but once the Web became a space for commercial gain in the mid-1990s and its population exploded, being at the top of the pile - translated as holding the first position in Google's search results - became the benchmark for offline financial returns.

The exponential increase in content on the web during the late 1990s and throughout the last decade has meant that reliable, trustworthy and credible information is increasingly difficult to pin down.

Net hope

At an individual level, we rely on friends and family for what to trust and what to believe, but we also look to experts and other people with high social status to point us in the right direction.

Tim Berners-Lee on the road in Ghana

Jimmy Wales, founder of the online-user generated encyclopaedia Wikipedia, admits that despite being the current poster child of information levelling, Wikipedia has explicit hierarchies that determine whose knowledge is more worthy than others'.

It seems that, for all its talk as a great leveller, the web is as unequal as we are.

Indeed, what we social scientists are discovering when we observe the web as a platform of social interaction is that, despite the medium, human beings seek hierarchies to help us make sense of our world.

It turns out that this is as relevant online as offline. After all, we can only bring to this digital tabula rasa what we already know and what we have gained from our existing experiences.

Despite this, people like former US Vice-President Al Gore is an online optimist.

When we spoke with him, he insisted that the global nature of the world wide web has the potential to change this, as different societies bring their different perspectives to bear on the web community.

Human medium

Indeed, when I joined the inventor of the web - Tim Berner's Lee - in Ghana as he was travelling to remote villages to try to understand what could happen when the African continent, parts of which have only recently been physically connected to the rest of the web with high-speed broadband access, makes its contribution to the international dialogue.

The author believes the web is a reflection of humanity

However, what I realised on this trip is that the imprint that most people in the African states will develop in their first experiences of the web will be based on what non-Africans have created.

Our two decades of shaping this maturing technology his has led us to a tool that has been crafted in our image.

When the Virtual Revolution team went to Abiriw, a rural village in the mountains outside Ghana's capital Accra, I was struck by how the kids in the local community centre used the web - they saw the world of information through the window of Google.

The search engine works on a principle of the "madness" or "wisdom" of crowds, basing its results on which websites receive the most links to their pages.

The majority of the crowd to date has been non-Africans, and so the window that these kids are using for information is non-African. What kind of dogma does that transmit?

And how does this reinforce the inequalities that exist between the developed and the developing world?

Ultimately, the web is a reflection of humanity, not a humanity-changer. We bring to it all of our other human foibles, warts and all.

Putting names to the lost soldiers of Fromelles

The first of the remains of 250 World War I soldiers found in France are being reburied with military honours after painstaking efforts to identify them. How do you put the right name on a headstone after so long?

When the first chipped and battle-scarred bones were excavated from a muddy field in northern France last May, the story of the forgotten battle of Fromelles began to emerge.

The remains of 250 British and Australian soldiers had lain undiscovered for 93 years since falling on the Western Front.

Boots, purses, toothbrushes and other personal artefacts lay amongst the twisted skeletons at Pheasant Wood, offering partial clues about the men's identities.

But it is the unique genetic codes within these remains that offer the best chance of putting names to each unknown soldier.

So far, more than 800 UK families who think they may have lost a relative at Fromelles have given DNA samples, but many will be disappointed.

The man whose job it is to help identify the soldiers says it is like finding a needle in a haystack, albeit with a very good metal detector.

"The problem with DNA that's been in the ground for 90 years is it degrades in quality and quantity," says molecular geneticist Dr Peter Jones.

"If it's a very acidic site, there's no chance of DNA at all because acids attack DNA rapidly. If it's dry and arid like in a desert, you get good DNA. If it's wet, less good."

The remains extracted from Fromelle's muddy burial pits have produced small but workable amounts of DNA, says Dr Jones. The teeth, which preserve well because they are encased in enamel, give by far the best samples.

"The hardest part is finding the right families and getting them to come forward... you can have good DNA profiles, but no family to match it up to."

Tracing family DNA An individual's genetic code is carried by the DNA inside every cell of the body. A unique DNA profile and sequence can be made by extracting DNA from remains of the dead or mouth swabs of the living. DNA from Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA is then analysed. Families will share similar DNA traits. Family trees help establish paternal and maternal lines to trace who is alive today to provide DNA samples to match against those taken from the remains of the Fromelles soldiers. As long as a relative is on either the paternal or maternal line, then a match to a soldier should be possible. Clues to the soldier's identity would lie with his sons or grandsons, if he had any, as the male Y chromosome DNA is passed from father to son. If he did not have children, as in the example above, DNA from his brother's grandsons or great grandsons may do. On the soldier's maternal side, his sister's grandchildren or his sister's grandaughters' children will have inherited the same mitochondrial DNA he got from his mother. If there are no surviving members on one branch of the family, then going back generations to find another line is also valid. BACK 1 of 4 NEXT Although 250 bodies have been recovered from the graves, it's thought about 1,500 British and 5,500 Australian troops fell in the battle, making it all the harder to match. And when it comes to matching DNA samples across several generations, Dr Jones says the methods are far from perfect. Unlike the seven "markers" used for more exact matches on the National DNA Database, he only has two at his disposal - the Y (paternal) and mitrochondrial (maternal) profiles. IN PICTURES: THE ARTEFACTS Boots, bibles and tobacco pouches "If we had the children of the soldiers, we could use the same markers as the DNA database. But because we are three generations away, the markers get diluted out through each mother and father." Families searching for their ancestors have been asked to give maternal and paternal samples - preferably two each - using a simple cheek swab. The DNA results will be added to the anthropological, archaeological and historical information to try to get positive identifications. Families will be told sometime after March, once the remains of all 250 soldiers have been buried. Their final resting place will be a new war cemetery nearby, the first to be built in 50 years. The £3m project, funded by the British and Australian governments, is overseen by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Waiting for news will be Richard Parker, 47, who has spent 25 years trying to retrace the footsteps of his ancestor Leonard Twamley. His father's uncle was just 19 when he volunteered for the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Six months later, the 20-year-old died at Fromelles. "He was an ordinary working class lad from Coventry working in a cycle factory, who gave his life because it was considered his patriotic duty to do so." Although interested in Len's story since his 20s, Mr Parker did not know he was killed at Fromelles until an amateur historian contacted him last year. Leonard Twamley's mother put this poignant notice in the Coventry Herald Since then he has made a pilgrimage to the French village with his father, who supplied DNA, along with Len's surviving nephews and nieces. "Even if his body isn't found, in some respects his memory is even more alive now. By researching what sort of person he was, we now know much more about him," Mr Parker says. "My grandmother died without knowing where Len was buried... this would bring proper closure to a family tragedy that goes back 95 years." Unknown soldiers The bodies that remain untraceable will be buried with a headstone marked simply "Known Unto God". Dr Jones fears many will suffer this fate. He estimates the final number identified to be up to 100, but more likely tens. THE BATTLE OF FROMELLES 19-20 July 1916, 19 days after Somme Campaign Intended as diversion to stop German soldiers going to Somme Troops of 5th Australian and 61st British divisions led attack at 6pm Within 11 hours, 5,533 Australians killed, wounded or taken prisoner and 1,547 similar British losses Soldiers from Gloucestershire, Bristol, Warwickshire and Worcestershire heavily involved Worst 24 hours in Australia's military history, considered a national tragedy Forces believed to have included the then 27-year-old Adolf Hitler Even if there is a DNA match, it may not necessarily be the right family because some DNA profiles are relatively common. Adoptions, women who married and changed names, and paternity issues can also throw a spanner in the works. Other families simply die out. But a match can be made through cousins, nephews or nieces on the family line. So if a family is missing a paternal link, they can trace the soldier's father, grandfather or brother, then locate their living relatives. Dr Jones says one family went back seven generations on the maternal side then came forward five to find a suitable relative. Forensic anthropologist Professor Margaret Cox says the team is so reliant on DNA matches as 90% of British enlistment records were destroyed in the Blitz. And the painstaking methods of extracting and cataloguing remains have been refined at the scenes of genocide and war crimes in Rwanda, the Balkans and Iraq. As at those sites, the bodies recovered gave clues to their fate - in this case, fractured bones showing damage from machine guns, rifles, mortar shells and shrapnel. But they were buried in deep graves with order and respect. "You try not to imagine what it was like, it makes it difficult to do our work," she says, adding that this is easier said than done at times. What brought the tragedy home were the artefacts - the inscribed bibles and lucky charms. For her, the two most poignant came from Australian soldiers. The first was a small lucky charm in the shape of a boomerang, to symbolise returning home. The other was the return half of a railway ticket from Freemantle to Perth, intended for the soldier's journey home to his family.

New species of Papua New Guinea frog changes colour

A new species of frog undergoes a remarkable transformation as it grows into an adult, report scientists.

Shiny black juvenile frogs with yellow spots dramatically change into peach coloured adults with bright blue eyes.

Scientists discovered the unique frog in a remote part of south-eastern Papua New Guinea.

The bright pattern of the young frog could act as a warning to predators, they say, but it is a mystery why the adult then loses this colour.

The scientists from Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, US, report their findings in the journal Copeia.

Amphibian species come in a range of colours and patterns, from the brightly patterned poison dart frogs to the plainer greens of the common toad.

After metamorphosising from a tadpole, some frogs change in colour as they get older.

However, it is unknown for juveniles and adults of a species to have strikingly different colour and pattern schemes.

The research team came across the new species of frog Oreophryne ezra while on a expedition to find new species on Sudest Island, Louisiade Archipelago, off the south-eastern tip of New Guinea.

Of the new species they found, the frog particularly caught their attention.

Consisting of more than 5,000 species described, frogs are among the most diverse groups of vertebrates Populations of certain frog species are declining significantly, due to habitat loss, climate change and the spread of an infectious fungus There is increasing evidence that some frogs around the world synchronise their mating activity by the full Moon

"It's always exciting to discover a species you know to be new. However, the obviously unusual biology of this frog made its discovery especially exciting," says Dr Fred Kraus who along with Dr Allen Allison undertook the study.

"The remarkable thing about this frog is the drastic nature of its change in colour pattern as it matures from a tiny froglet into adulthood," Dr Kraus says.

As a juvenile the frog is dark black with yellow spots and black eyes but then switches to a uniform peach colour with blues eyes.

"This raises the question of what possible function the striking colours of the juveniles might serve," says Dr Kraus.

Juveniles closely resemble the general appearance of some of the poison dart frogs from the tropics.

Like these frogs, the colouration could serve as a warning to potential predators.

Although untested, the frog may also have harmful toxins in its skin like those present in poison dart frogs.

Poison dart frogs have skin that contains harmful alkaloids acting as a chemical defence against predation.

"If this is the case this would make this species another instance of the independent evolution of such a system," says Dr Kraus.

The behaviour of the frog also points to the idea that its colour advertises that it is toxic.

The researchers write how the juvenile frogs perch in conspicuous places during daylight hours and also demonstrated a lack of a well developed escape behaviour, indicating that they have another form of defence.

One aspect that cannot be explained is if the colour offers protection to the juvenile, why does the frog then change its colour scheme as it ages to one that offers no protection.

For now this poses further questions for the researchers.

"No other such instance is known in frogs," Dr Kraus says.

"If it does serve as protective warning colouration, the reason for its loss remains a mystery."