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Inventing the World Wide Web could be considered a remarkable achievement for a lifetime. But Sir Tim Berners-Lee has another burning ambition: reinventing it.
Thirty years ago, Sir Tim had designed much of the architecture of our information age, ensuring that the Web was open, free and accessible to all. The creation of this user-friendly interface with the Internet has resulted in an incredible explosion of communication and creativity, transforming our world in an incalculable way. Some 4 billion people now enjoy almost instant access to more information than their grandparents would ever have imagined.
But in recent years, the Web has taken a dark turn as companies, states and criminal interests have sought to exploit its radical openness. Our era of information, which still promises so much, has been disfigured by the emergence of surveillance capitalism, electoral manipulation and cybercrime.
Sir Tim is increasingly worried about the transformation of his invention into an "engine of inequity and division" as he describes it. The resolution of this emerging "anti-human" phenomenon has become the urgent priority of his life, as the unrelated peoples who live in today's world and future generations connect in the next few years. decades.
"We've created all kinds of great things on the web. But, in recent years, we have realized that there were a lot of dysfunctions in society, "Sir Tim said in an interview in Australia. "People are manipulated to vote against their best interests. The foundations of democracy are threatened.
The crucial question facing all of our societies is whether web vulnerabilities are a temporary bug that can be corrected or a permanent feature that can at best be contained. Sir Tim is still convinced that there is a technological solution. Its goal now is to fix the bug and create a more respectful and powerful website that meets our real needs.
Since 2015, Sir Tim has been working with a small team of computer scientists from the Mbadachusetts Institute of Technology to design a new data platform called Solid (his name derives from "social related data"). Last year, he announced the launch of Inrupt, a for-profit company intended to bring into use Solid.
Thousands of developers from 26 countries are experimenting with 50,000 PODs (Solid Personal Data Store). The company is also working with larger partners, including an Indian telecom company and the UK's National Health Service, to explore how Solid could be configured on a large scale.
To this end, Inrupt hopes to complete a multi-million dollar fundraiser by the end of March, which will enable it to launch a user product by the end of the year. In technological jargon, Solid aims to "redecentralize" the Web, making the ownership of the data available to the users who generate it and allowing them to allow other users to access it.
"Solid solves a few problems at once because it's a paradigm shift," says Sir Tim. "But if you had to choose one, it would be: giving people total control over their data."
The challenges of scaling Solid are daunting to say the least. Businesses and governments have every interest in preserving the current data ecosystem; Billions of users have built their lives around free and convenient services; and the technological and financial requirements of launching an alternative platform are immense.
But according to friends, the 63-year-old computer scientist was boosted by his latest mission. "It's sorcerer. It is delicate. Things can explode on you, "says Sir Tim. "But we know how to shoot rockets in the sky. We should be able to build constructive social networks. "
Given what has happened over the past three decades, the origins of the Web now seem very old and far away. In 1989, Sir Tim worked in Switzerland as a software engineer at CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Landing on his NeXT computer, he designed an online information space in which documents can be identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and linked by hypertext links, thus facilitating navigation between pages.
In his book Weave the Webhe compared the effort needed to launch the web to those needed to run a bobsleigh: everyone had to push hard for a seemingly long time, but once the bobsleigh was gaining speed, everyone could get on board and enjoy the ride.
The decisive factor in the development of the Web has been Sir Tim's selfless decision not to patent his invention, probably leaving the opportunity to win billions of dollars while keeping cyberspace open and non-exclusive. According to science writer James Gleick, the Web was "The patent that never existed".
As a result, cyberspace has grown at a fascinating rate. There are now nearly 4.2 billion Internet users in the world, accessing nearly 2 billion websites, according to the latest ever-changing data from Internetlivestats.com.
Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalization and Development at Oxford University and co-author of Age of discovery, argues that the mbadive adoption of the Web can only be compared to the invention of the printing press in 15th century Europe and its revolutionary effect on communication. The arrival of the Web has opened a new era of abundant information, cheap distribution, radical variety and broad participation, comparable to a new Renaissance.
"The Web has been a huge positive net for humanity. It has been as revolutionary as the Gutenberg press in transforming the way ideas are shaped and shared, "said Goldin. "I can not think of another technology in the last 30 years that has changed so much for so many people so quickly."
The widespread adoption of the printing press in Europe and the mbadive spread of ideas have helped turn one of the most backward regions of the planet into its main center of innovation. "It's happening now on a much larger scale with the Web, allowing people from all corners of the world to learn from each other," says Goldin. "Hip-hop dancers in Harlem can now learn the movements of hip-hop dancers in Shanghai."
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But the revolutions of communication allow bad ideas to spread as quickly as good ones. "The Gutenberg press provoked the genius explosion, but it also led to 200 years of religious wars and gave Savonarola the floor," said Goldin, describing the flamboyant advertising torch as a "Donald Trump of the Fifteenth century".
Inrupt's ambition is to maximize the benefits of the Web while minimizing its disadvantages.
John Bruce, CEO of Inrupt, says the Solid platform will deliver tangible benefits for the three main Web entities – its users, service providers and developers.
Users, he says, will benefit from greater privacy and functionality by integrating all their digital services more securely on their devices. Service providers can focus on what they do well, like selling shoes, rather than worrying about what they do wrong, such as data management. And developers will be able to design applications in the direct interest of users, rather than technology companies and advertisers who support them.
"Solid frees up a lot for us all, that's why it's so important to the Web," Bruce says. "Some people say we are returning the web. But we like to think that we are moving in the right direction. Inrupt is not just about encouraging this new ecosystem, but also about leading it. "
Sir Tim said the Solid team was setting new architectural rules on how things could work online. "At the moment, it's a team of people with a vision that is making a very coordinated effort to do things deliberately so that we make sure things behave the way we want and that they have the promised impact. ," he says.
While Inrupt can get things done, Sir Tim believes that Solid could help spark a new wave of exciting innovation as developers take advantage of the freer flow of valuable data. "If you pay a developer to create reliable applications, or you use open source applications that will not announce, ambush, or distract you, then you trust them more and give them access to much more data. "he says.
"I think we can use very powerful applications that will have access to all our data. We can share everything we want with anyone. I can share my hospital records with my doctor, I can share my photos with my cousin. "
The odds seem to be superimposed on Sir Tim and the Solid team. First, they rely on complacency, baduming users care enough to pay for reliable applications and spend time managing their own data settings. Second, they rely on deeply rooted interests that did not exist in the creation of the Web.
"It may be possible to create a clean website," says a digital expert. "But there are too many powerful and corrupt states and corporate interests that want to keep it dirty."
If Sir Tim really succeeds in revolutionizing mbad communication for the second time, his latest achievement could be considered almost as important as his first. An adjective best describes Sir Tim's ambition: bold.
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