The founder of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, shared his vision for the future of the Web, and he hopes it may be even better than the current Web3 speculation.
Initially created as an online platform for scientists to collaborate, communicate and share data, the first website was created for scientists at CERN and set the standards still used today, such as URLs, HTTP and HTML.
The Internet hit the public eye when it entered the Web2 stage, which paved the way for mobile applications and platforms. It also introduced the cloud, which underpins much of today’s computing activities.
Web3 and Solid
Berners-Lee is currently working on a new standard for data sharing called Solid, which is expected to gain support for identity management tools such as global single sign-on (SSO), global access control and universal human-centric APIs.
Reliable (opens in a new tab) aims to challenge the notion that online revenue should come primarily from advertising, rather than emphasizing privacy. The idea is that users can share their data in interoperable, decentralized data stores called “Pods”.
To commercialize the project, Berners-Lee is working on a company called Inrupt, which is made up of investors, entrepreneurs, developers and scientists. The says the company (opens in a new tab) that it aims to[put] persons controlling their data, [give] organizations new opportunities to create value for customers and [allow] developers to thrive in an open innovation market.
According VentureBeat (opens in a new tab)Berners-Lee has already used Solid to store its own data, including bank statements, documents, photos, music, IoT data, and exercise data. In this case, he is said to be accessing his data via the Mac Mini.
He believes the importance of this new era may be greater than its first iteration, as he sees huge security benefits for consumers as well as government and healthcare institutions.