Radical new plan to upend the World Wide Web - Users control their own Information
Exclusive: Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to
upend the World Wide Web
With an ambitious
decentralized platform, the father of the web hopes it’s game on for corporate
tech giants like Facebook and Google.
BY KATRINA
BROOKER September 29, 2018 12:01 AM
“The intent is world
domination,” Berners-Lee says with a wry smile. The British-born scientist is
known for his dry sense of humor. But in this case, he is not joking.
This week, Berners-Lee
will launch, Inrupt, a startup that he has been building,
in stealth mode, for the past nine months. Backed by Glasswing Ventures, its
mission is to turbocharge a broader movement afoot, among developers around the
world, to decentralize the web and take back power from the forces that have
profited from centralizing it. In other words, it’s game on for Facebook,
Google, Amazon. For years now, Berners-Lee and other internet activists have
been dreaming of a digital utopia where individuals control their own data and
the internet remains free and open. But for Berners-Lee, the time for dreaming
is over.
“We have to do it
now,” he says, displaying an intensity and urgency that is uncharacteristic for
this soft-spoken academic. “It’s a historical moment.” Ever since revelations emerged
that Facebook had allowed people’s data to be misused by political operatives,
Berners-Lee has felt an imperative to get this digital idyll into the real
world. In a post published this weekend, Berners-Lee
explains that he is taking a sabbatical from MIT to work full time on Inrupt.
The company will be the first major commercial venture built off of Solid, a
decentralized web platform he and others at MIT have spent years building.
A NETSCAPE FOR TODAY’S INTERNET
If all goes as planned,
Inrupt will be to Solid what Netscape once was for many first-time users of the
web: an easy way in. And like with Netscape, Berners-Lee hopes Inrupt will be
just the first of many companies to emerge from Solid.
“I have been imagining
this for a very long time,” says Berners-Lee. He opens up his laptop and starts
tapping at his keyboard. Watching the inventor of the web work at his computer
feels like what it might have been like to watch Beethoven compose a symphony:
It’s riveting but hard to fully grasp. “We are in the Solid world now,” he
says, his eyes lit up with excitement. He pushes the laptop toward me so I too
can see.
On his screen, there
is a simple-looking web page with tabs across the top: Tim’s to-do list, his
calendar, chats, address book. He built this app–one of the first on Solid–for
his personal use. It is simple, spare. In fact, it’s so plain that, at
first glance, it’s hard to see its significance. But to Berners-Lee, this
is where the revolution begins. The app, using Solid’s decentralized
technology, allows Berners-Lee to access all of his data seamlessly–his
calendar, his music library, videos, chat, research. It’s like a mashup of
Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify, and WhatsApp.
The difference here is
that, on Solid, all the information is under his control. Every bit of data he
creates or adds on Solid exists within a Solid pod–which is an acronym for
personal online data store. These pods are what give Solid users control over
their applications and information on the web. Anyone using the platform will
get a Solid identity and Solid pod. This is how people, Berners-Lee says, will
take back the power of the web from corporations.
For example, one idea Berners-Lee is currently working on is a way
to create a decentralized version of Alexa, Amazon’s increasingly ubiquitous
digital assistant. He calls it Charlie. Unlike with Alexa, on Charlie people
would own all their data. That means they could trust Charlie with, for
example, health records, children’s school events, or financial records. That
is the kind of machine Berners-Lee hopes will spring up all over Solid to flip
the power dynamics of the web from corporation to individuals.
A NEW REVOLUTION FOR DEVELOPERS?
Berners-Lee believes Solid
will resonate with the global community of developers, hackers, and internet
activists who bristle over corporate and government control of the web.
“Developers have always had a certain amount of revolutionary spirit,” he
observes. Circumventing government spies or corporate overlords may be the
initial lure of Solid, but the bigger draw will be something even more
appealing to hackers: freedom. In the centralized web, data is kept in
silos–controlled by the companies that build them, like Facebook and Google. In
the decentralized web, there are no silos.
Starting this week,
developers around the world will be able to start building their own
decentralized apps with tools through the Inrupt site. Berners-Lee will spend
this fall criss-crossing the globe, giving tutorials and presentations to
developers about Solid and Inrupt. (There will be a Solid tutorial at our Fast Company Innovation Festival on
October 23.)
“What’s great about
having a startup versus a research group is things get done,” he says. These
days, instead of heading into his lab at MIT, Berners-Lee comes to the Inrupt
offices, which are currently based out of Janeiro Digital, a company he has contracted
to help work on Inrupt. For now, the company consists of Berners-Lee; his
partner John Bruce, who built Resilient, a security platform bought by IBM; a
handful of on-staff developers contracted to work on the project; and a
community of volunteer coders.
Later this fall,
Berners-Lee plans to start looking for more venture funding and grow his team.
The aim, for now, is not to make billions of dollars. The man who gave the web
away for free has never been motivated by money. Still, his plans could impact
billion-dollar business models that profit off of control over data. It’s not
likely that the big powers of the web will give up control without a fight.
When asked about this,
Berners-Lee says flatly: “We are not talking to Facebook and Google about whether
or not to introduce a complete change where all their business models are
completely upended overnight. We are not asking their permission.”
Game
on.
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