Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the celebrated British inventor of the world wide web, has admitted this week that he has created a monster.
Sir Tim invented the web in 1989, with a mission and hope that sharing information freely would benefit humanity and the planet.
However, nearly 30 years on he has been forced to admit that all hasn’t gone to plan. According to Berners-Lee, the world wide web has “evolved into an engine of inequity and division, swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas”.
Indeed, Berners-Lee has voiced similar opinions in recent years, commenting on the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year: “I can imagine Mark Zuckerberg is devastated that his creation has been abused and misused. Some days I have the same feeling #justsaying.”
Tim Berners-Lee’s new masterplan
Instead of a web that offers users apps that “spy on them” and “have an ulterior motive of distracting them with propositions to buy this and that” Berners-Lee has a new masterplan.
Through start-up Inrupt he is launching a new online platform called Solid.
“I will be guiding the next stage of the web in a very direct way . . . Its mission is to provide commercial energy and an ecosystem to help protect the integrity and quality of the new web,” Berners-Lee told Fast Company magazine.
After hands-on time with Solid, Fast Company concluded that: “It’s like a mash-up of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify and WhatsApp.”
In addition to Solid, Sir Tim also revealed that he is working on a digital assistant called Charlie to rival to Amazon’s Alexa.
Interesting stuff, for sure! And we look forward to hearing and seeing lots more on Sir Tim’s latest ventures very soon.
Via The Times and Fast Company and Medium
Newsletter sign up
