Tim Berners-Leethe designer of the world wide webthe websitesensures that the Web3 does not serve to fix the Internet, and he is convinced that the solution lies in projects such as Solid.
Tim Berners-Lee is a data scientist who in the early 1990s created the standard WWW, and with it the web pages. Basically, it turned the Internet into a tool that could be used by everyone.
In the early 1990s, the Internet was still in the hands of universities and enthusiastic early adopters, who saw the Net as a means to improve the world. Being able to communicate and exchange information with the entire planet would make us freer, wiser, more tolerant, and would put an end to extremism and hatred.
At that time were born Web pages, Linuxthe free code wave Wikipedia. Non-profit projects that believed in that beautiful utopia of a better world for all.
The destruction of an ideal
But then social networks came to the Internet, the political partiesthe governments, extremism, religions, big techcompanies eager to make money at anything, scammers, deniers, profiteers, etc. And we all suffer what has happened.
Thirty years later, we are on the verge of a nuclear war, extremism rules in many countries, in the United States there is talk of civil war, and hatred and intolerance reign in social networks.
Governments use the Internet to control all the movements of its citizensa handful of just 4 or 5 big tech companies control all the data and they use them to spy, to trade privacy, to manipulate elections, to do and undo as they please. The fake news, the denialism and the fanaticism roam as they please.
We live in the worst time for 70 years, and the Internet is to blame for it. Luckily there are people who will try to fix it, if that’s possible. It is the case of Tim Berners-Lee and your project Solidand the Web3championed by Elon Musk or jack dorseythe founder of Twitter.
Web3 is not the solution, according to Tim Berners-Lee
The Web 1.0 These are the beginnings of the Internet: web pages and services that only worked in one direction. Users used those online services, and that’s it.
The Web 2.0 allows users to participate in the creation and use of content: customize those services, create their own, and collaborate with other people on online projects. It is the interactive and collaborative Internet.
Save there is talk of the arrival of the Web 3.0 either Web3in the shadow of cryptocurrencies: a new decentralized internet and without owner, managed by the blockchain. That is, the equivalent of cryptocurrencies, but applied to Internet management.
A network in which governments and large corporations such as Google, Amazon, or Meta do not control the data, but are in the hands of the users themselves, protected and managed by the blockchain. No one could manipulate them, spy on them or steal them, because the blockchain is inviolable. Elon Musk either jack dorsey support this concept. Tim Berners-Lee think it leads nowhere.
The creator of the pages and currently in charge of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is responsible for approving Internet standards, believes that Web3 doesn’t make senseand those who promote it they don’t understand how the internet works.
“You have to understand what the terms we are discussing really mean, beyond buzzwords“, said Berners-Lee at a conference in Lisbon, according to techspot. “It’s a shame that the people at Ethereum have taken the real name of Web3 for the things they are doing with the blockchain.“.
Tim Berners-Lee is convinced that the blockchain is not the solution to decentralize the Internetsimply because “it’s too slow, too expensive, and too public“. What the Internet needs is for data management to be “fast, cheap and private“.
That is what his Solid project seeks, which he launched in 2018. new internet that returns personal data to users.
What is Solid
Solid proposes that all users’ private information be stored in hermetic (encrypted) containers called Solid POD. It is important to be clear that we are talking about ALL personal data. Any personal information you create, from a message to your browsing history, a photo you share, everything is saved in a POD.
A POD it can be on a server on the Internet, but also on a USB key, or a computer that you set up as a POD server. Is about a physical containerwhich you will have to connect to the Internet since the apps or websites you use will access it to use the data that you decide to share.
The advantage of this is that your data is with you physically, either on a USB flash drive, or on your computer, and no one else can access them. They are not on servers of large companies or on social networks. No one can access them if you don’t want to.
It seems like a limited solution, because there are people who generate hundreds of gigabytes of private data by uploading photos, videos, etc. But there is data that you don’t mind being public, so that won’t go to the POD. In any case, also you can use online servers to store your Solid PODs, so you don’t have to worry about space. You can create all the PODs you want.
When you install an app or a browser, you decide what part of your data (or which POD) it can access, so you have total control over what others know about you. And it’s not just theory: you can create your own POD in Solidand an SDK is now available so that developers can create apps compatible with Solid.
It is a proposal as utopian as free code, Linux or Wikipedia were at the time. The problem is that Solid fights against the tyranny of tech corporations and governments They control all data on the Internet. And they are not going to let that power be taken away.
For Tim Berners-Leethe internet of the future does not go through Web3but Solid. They are different ways of trying to fix something that is broken, and in the hands of almighty giants. It won’t be easy to get it.
