Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee wants to save his creations from centralization. But is he in line with Web3’s promise of salvation?
At the TNW conference, computer scientists answered in one word.
“No.”
Greetings, humanoids
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The snab may appear to be in conflict with Berners-Lee’s recent actions. The 67-year-old is currently campaigning to save his “dysfunctional” brains out of control of Big Tech.
He also earned $ 5.4 million by selling NFTs, one of the pillars of Web3.
But the British have their own vision for the successor to the Web. It’s a decentralized architecture that gives users control over their data.
Berners-Lee wants to build on a platform called Solid, but can also be called the Web. 3.0 3.0..
“Web 2.0 was the term used for malfunctions that occur in user-generated content on large platforms, so at some point we talked about it as Web 3.0,” he said.
“People are calling that Web 2.0, so if you want to call this Web 3.0, it’s okay.”
It doesn’t work on the blockchain.
Berners-Lee shares Web3’s mission to transfer data from Big Tech to people. But he is taking another route to the target.
While Web3 is based on blockchain, Solid is built with standard web tools and open specifications.
Personal information is stored in a distributed data store called a “pod” and can be hosted anywhere you like. Then you can select the apps that have access to your data.
This approach aims to provide interoperability, speed, scalability, and privacy.
“If you try to build something like that on the blockchain, it won’t work,” Berners-Lee said.
Berners-Lee says Solid serves two separate purposes. One is to prevent businesses from misusing data for annoying purposes, such as manipulating voters or generating clickbaits.
The other is to provide an opportunity to benefit from our information.
For example, medical data can be shared among trusted services to improve treatment and support medical research.
On the other hand, our photos can be provided to Facebook friends, LinkedIn colleagues, and Flickr followers without having to upload them to each platform.
This is reminiscent of Berners-Lee’s original purpose of making the Web a collaboration tool.
“The problem is when some of the solutions are in my head, some of the solutions are in your head, and you are on the other side of the globe, that is, when you are connected to the internet. I wanted to be able to solve it, “he said.
“It was like I was looking for on the Web. It has grown even more as a publishing medium, but not everything is lost.”
Solid hasn’t yet proven an effective remedy, but Web’s father still believes that his whimsical kid can return straight and narrow.