It was March 12, 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist working at CERN in Geneva, sent a memo proposing a “distributed hypertext system” to link information on the research center's various projects. That memo marked the birth of World Wide Web, the invention that would forever change the way we communicate and access information. Today, 35 years later, Berners-Lee is working on a new evolution.
But let's go back for a moment
When Tim Berners-Lee sent that memo in 1989, his colleagues at CERN did not immediately understand the significance of his idea. After all, CERN was a place where large particle accelerators were built, not a think tank for computer geeks. Why would they be interested in the “bizarre” idea of linking information across an extensive computer network?
But Berners-Lee saw his project as a way to make researchers' work easier. At the time, several thousand scientists worked at CERN, but information about their projects was isolated in separate blocks. Linking this information across a computer network seems obvious today, yet it took a full 18 months before Tim Berners-Lee got permission to dedicate himself full time to his idea.
Thus Tim Berners-Lee “gave birth” to the web
In December 1991, Berners-Lee published the first web page for CERN users. The following year he distributed his software for free. The growth was exponential: in 1994, with over 10.000 web servers online, Berners-Lee realized that standards were needed. He moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to ensure that the open, royalty-free nature of the web was enshrined in its founding principles.
It was in those years that Tim Berners-Lee began talking about the "semantic web". An idea that is based on metadata and relationships.
Think of a machine-readable version of the web that adds context and structure to information. That way, you can ask things like 'play me music written by people born in Minnesota cities with fewer than 200.000 people.
Tim Berners-Lee in a video at MIT, 2010
Simply put, if information is connected to each other (and freely accessible) it can be used in original, unpredictable, genuine ways. Free. A concept that cannot work if the data is isolated or controlled by individual companies: for this reason, in a certain sense, social networks they have stabbed the web over and over again. Perhaps, in fact, they have already killed him. Certainly, it's in pieces (also for political reasons).
The push for a more open web
Exactly 20 years after the first "foundation", in 2009 Tim Berners-Lee contributed to founding the World Wide Web Foundation, which aims to “fight for a world where everyone has affordable and meaningful access to a web that improves their lives and protects their rights.” As? With the third evolution of the web, calling “Web 3.0”.
Be careful not to confuse it with Web3, which is based entirely on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Web 3.0, however, remains faithful to the founding principles of openness and royalty-free, combining the key ideas of the semantic web and user control over their data.
In 2016, Berners-Lee created the Solid protocol, a “single sign-on for the web,” as he called it in an interview in February 2023. What does it mean?
It means that there is a fundamental difference with today's web. Instead of having your data spread across hundreds of companies, as happens today, with Solid a user's data remains theirs. A single “capsule” (Pod) containing the data. No more dozens and dozens of passwords.
Each app developer can access a user's data, or part of it, by requesting access to their pod, with their permission. Berners-Lee gave the example of sharing data with a vacation planning app. “I show the app all the data in my pod about vacations we've taken in the past, just to help me find the next one. Then they disappear, the app no longer has access." Clear?
Tim Berners-Lee's idea needs support
To make Solid work, Berners-Lee realized he had to involve governments and large corporations. This is why he founded Inrupt together with John Bruce. The company's idea is to "galvanize efforts" around the Solid protocol and build "an agency version of the entire system," making Solid secure and scalable for use by governments and large organizations that want to use the data in a more ethical and consensual way.
How has it gone so far? In the more than five years since its founding, Inrupt has achieved some successes. For example he worked with the Flemish government to create Athumi, a “data utility company” that gives consumers and businesses in Flanders their own pods to store personal data. In 2022 partnered with the BBC for a six-month trial. Inrupt's website lists "clients" as the UK and Swedish governments, Natwest Bank, Britain's National Health Service and various American organisations.
So far, however, Inrupt's impact has not been disruptive. But Tim Berners-Lee is optimistic: people's growing awareness of their data will be a key driver of change.
A future to write
People will realize that basically anything that works and doesn't give them data in their pocket is somehow robbing them of power. There won't suddenly be a day when everything moves to the new system, but incrementally and inexorably, everything will move to this new, much more powerful world.
Tim Berners-Lee
What to say? I hope so. Berners-Lee's vision for Web 3.0 is ambitious: a web where users are in control of their data, information is interconnected and accessible, and the founding principles of openness and royalty-free are preserved. A return to the future, in short.
However, realizing this idea will not be easy: it will require the collaboration of governments, companies and developers, and a change in mindset on the part of users.
But if it succeeds, the result will be a more fair, open and user-controlled web.
A web where data is a shared resource, not a commodity to be exploited. A web that fully realizes the potential that Tim Berners-Lee glimpsed 35 years ago, when he first proposed the World Wide Web.
