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Exclusive: Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to upend the World Wide Web
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.
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.
[...] [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.
How does Solid compare to Tor, I2P, Freenet, IPFS, Diaspora, etc.?
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(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday October 01 2018, @02:00AM (2 children)
If it is a company and could be bought for big bucks if successful, what keeps Facebook from buying it and destroying it?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 01 2018, @03:08AM (1 child)
Their company will probably just provide an implementation of the protocol and consultation on how to integrate it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday October 01 2018, @03:43AM
Moreover, "Solid" came before the company Inrupt. It's a project run by Tim Berners-Lee based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And from the summary:
Although if Tim can't convince people to jump on his bandwagon, and he quits or is bought out or murdered by Zucc, maybe the thing will just die (only to be replaced by someone else's take on decentralization).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]