Berners-Lee aims to ‘turns the world the right way round’

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the world wide web, now wants to fix it – “a mid-course correction” – and enable a future where people have control of their own data via Personal Online Data Stores (Pods). 

Why it matters 

If successful, this would upend the current approach, where organisations and platforms hoover up user data to monetise. 

How does it work? 

His latest venture, Inrupt, is developing Solid, a technology that lets internet users bring their data together into a decentralised data store – “like secure personal web servers for data” – with owners then able to decide which people and applications can access it.

What he says 

In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee explained:

• “The idea of surveillance capitalism depends on your data going, by default, to somebody else, and Solid’s default is that it goes to you.”

• “We’re building systems which are demonstrably fairer, demonstrably more constructive, which demonstrably give power to the user.” 
• The project is still in its early days and is a year or two from coming to full fruition, “but if you’re a developer, then this is the time to join in”.