World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has unveiled his plans for a ‘New Internet’ that would decentralize the system and take power back from current kings including Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Berners-Lee’s start-up Inrupt is launching an app system this week that will allow users to regulate what personal information they share on the web and how that information is stored.
With Inrupt, users can create their own ‘personal online data store’ – or POD – to house anything from contact lists to calendar items to music libraries.
Put in simpler terms, the technology essentially brings together the functions of programs such as Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify and WhatsApp – all on one browser, all at one time.
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has unveiled his new startup Inrupt, which he hopes will launch a new era of the internet where users can control over the information they store and share – rather than relying on the discretion of sites such as Google and Facebook
Berners-Lee said the intent behind Inrupt is ‘world domination’ in an exclusive interview with Fast Company published Saturday.
The site noted that the comment was said in jest – but was also true.
‘It’s a historical moment,’ Berners-Lee said of the startup he’s been building for the past nine months. ‘We have to do it now.’
As of this week, tech developers around the globe can create their own decentralized apps using the tools available on the Inrupt website.
With Inrupt, users can create their own ‘personal online data store’ – or POD – to house anything from contact lists to calendar items to music libraries. A few app prototypes – built with the technology from Berners-Lee’s already-established open source platform Solid – are pictured above
Berners-Lee is no stranger to the forefront of the technology industry, having been credited with transforming the internet when he established the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994.
He believes that through Inrupt, he can and will upend the system again, making the long-sought dream of a ‘free and open digital utopia’ into a reality.
‘I’m incredibly optimistic for this next era of the web,’ Berners-Lee said.
Central to the tech mogul’s philosophy has been shifting control away from online giants who have profited from the web’s current centralization and back to individual users.
Berners-Lee established the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994, cementing himself among the top influencers in the technology industry
The Inrupt site will serve as a widely-accessible entry point to the tech legend’s already-established open-source platform Solid.
One of Solid’s key features is that people are in charge of deciding who can access the information they store within their PODs – which the company refers to as ‘personal empowerment through data’.
Inrupt is said to have the potential to completely upend the business models of companies like Facebook and Google, who have raked in profits from quietly selling user information to third parties.
An avid defender of net neutrality, Berners-Lee said: ‘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.’