Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster and other social networking sites threaten to break the web into "fragmented islands" says world wide web founder Tim Berners-Lee.

His lengthy piece in Scientific American more than sounds a warning note; it likens the defence of the Internet to continued prosperity, liberty and democracy. With that high note, Berners-Lee launches into his call for an internet with continued open standards and neutrality.

No one else can start an argument like this: "The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990. It consisted of one website and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer."

The threat to the initial egalitarian principles of sharing information with everyone comes from sites or services such as Facebook, that effectively wall off information posted by users from the rest of the Web. Such sites are becoming "silos" of information. This is back to the future stuff. Anyone remember how America Online used to operate? Even then I thought it was anti-Internet.

"The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service – but only within their sites," Berners-Lee writes. "Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site."

Another threat comes from cable television companies that sell Internet connectivity and are considered whether to limit users to their own entertainment or data mix. Mobile phone companies are also seeking ways to restrict or rather, modulate, web traffic over their networks. This is the moving away from "net neutrality" I raised in an earlier column.

Check out his article, "Long Live the Web", at www.scientificamerican.com. By the way, here is a simple question that I think many people (like myself) long forgot the answer to: What is the difference between the world wide web and the Internet? I know the answer but did not really realise what the separation meant until reading the article.

"The Web is an application that runs on the Internet, which is an electronic network that transmits packets of information among millions of computers according to a few open protocols. An analogy is that the Web is like a household appliance that runs on the electricity network," says Berners-Lee.

The Web, e-mail or instant messaging run on the Internet as long as it uses a few standard Internet protocols, such as TCP and IP. The difference is key as it allows the development of one without really affecting the other. The Internet can speed up without affecting sites already on the network.

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Edelman, a consultancy, has surveyed the use of digital media to reach elected representatives by those who lobby the US Congress, the European Parliament and the French, German and British parliaments. It does so by surveying parliamentary staff who support the elected reps.

Strangely, or perhaps not depending on your perceptions of the French and Germans, Edelman found those in the French and German parliaments have a preference for the written letter over digital communications. About 62% of lobbyists say they now used Facebook to reach parliamentarians compared to 15% three years ago. Text messaging has doubled, blogging has risen from 16% to 46% and Twitter has grown to 38% from 7%.

Edelman points out that the results show traditional outreach remains critical as the main means of ensuring a parliamentarian gets your message, but digital communication also has a role to play in backing up the in-person visits. E-mails are seen as effective but using a member's Facebook, Twitter or blog to contact them is also seen as partially effective.

If anyone has a wish list of gadgets they may like to get for Christmas, please send them to me. It might help other people with ideas for gifts, even yours!

Contact Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com