Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist and father of the internet who is considered to be the inventor of World Wide Web has indicated that the decentralised internet he wants to build using his Solid project does not need blockchain technology.
In a recent conference of The Next Web website, Sir Tim Berners-Lee stated that while the decentralised internet he wants to promote will not need blockchain. Instead, his own vision for the web’s successor is a decentralized architecture that gives users control of their data.
The WWW inventor has long argued for the need to decentralize the World Wide Web. Which is why in the framework of The Next Web conferences, Berners-Lee was asked if Web 3.0 meets his wishes, he responded “nope.”
To preserve an open, global internet that sparks innovation and helps us collectively tackle the challenges we face, we need to build globally accepted norms to shape the digital future we want.
My latest in @ForeignPolicy w/@webfoundation: https://t.co/gK37Bz9k3u
— Tim Berners-Lee (@timberners_lee) September 23, 2021
Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Ambitions for Project Solid
Berners-Lee has spent the last several years working on ’Project Solid’ that’s built with standard web tools and open specifications, whereas Web 3.0 is based on blockchain.
Project Solid stores private information in decentralized data stores called pods that can also be hosted anywhere the user wants. Users can then select which apps can access their data. The idea of Project Solid is to offer speed, privacy, scalability and interoperability.
“When you try to build those things on the blockchain, it just doesn’t work”, said Berners-Lee.
Project Solid has two main purposes according to Berners-Lee: The first is to prevent companies from misusing our data for unsolicited purposes, generating clickbait and manipulating voters. The second is to provide opportunities to benefit from our information.
“I wanted to be able to solve problems when part of the solution is in my head and part of the solution is in yours, and you are on the other side of the planet, both connected to the internet. This is what I wanted for the WWW. It became more of a means to publish content, but all is not lost.”
Using this method, healthcare data for instance, could be shared between trusted services in order to improve our treatment and support medical research.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
