We must all know that whenever we use the internet to use some services of the web, we are uploading data to be gathered by search engines, social media or other of those providers.
As those services collect data, we have no control over how those companies are using it for their own purpose. Because user data is indeed expensive, inventor or the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, is working on a startup that has a mission to help people control their data.
And that is by building the decentralized internet of the future.
The company is called Inrupt, and its offering is called 'Solid', a platform that allows users to decide how they want to store their data. This includes contacts, photos, music library, calendar events, fitness and health activity, and everything in between.
"People want apps that help them do what they want and need to do - without spying on them," Berners-Lee said. "Apps that don't have an ulterior motive of distracting them with propositions to buy this or that."
Read: When Things Are Free On The Internet, They Aren't "Free". Your Data Is Expensive
Solid here stores user data in a POD (Personal Online Data store), which can be either a secure hosted server, or a server that users have in control. To allow users to manage their own data, they get an identity associated with this POD.
Users that signed up to use apps using Solid, allows them to use the web just like they normally would. From search engines, social media networks, email, online streaming and so forth. The only difference is that these apps will only be able to connect to the users' POD, and read/write data to it, only when they are allowed by the users.
In other words, users are in charge of their data that is stored in their POD, and they are the ones who can device what to do with it.
And since user data doesn't live on online companies' servers anymore, they cannot generate detailed profiles of users to allow advertisers to target them. Those companies also cannot mine users' data for insight, nor sell the data to third-parties.
"Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance - by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way," Berners-Lee explained.
The idea by Tim Berners-Lee is to create a decentralized internet, or to be more precise, a decentralized version of Alexa, which is Amazon's digital assistant. Berners-Lee calls it 'Charlie', but unlike Alexa, users of Charlie would own all of their data.
Starting with the launch of Solid, developers can start building their own decentralized apps with tools through the Inrupt website.
This kind of technology is what Berners-Lee hopes to spring up all over Solid, and give the power back to users, away from web corporations who have long acted as the gatekeepers of the web.
In other words, Berners-Lee is on against Google, Facebook and a list of other online companies that thrive by collecting user data.
For years, Berners-Lee and other internet activists have been dreaming of a digital utopia where individuals control their own data and the internet remains free and open. For Berners-Lee, the time for dreaming is over.
“I have been imagining this for a very long time,” says Berners-Lee. "We have to do it now."
He believes Solid will resonate with the global community of developers, hackers, and internet activists who bristle over corporate and government control of the web.
"Developers have always had a certain amount of revolutionary spirit," he observes.
Inrupt is backed by Glasswing Ventures. With the mission to turbocharge a broader movement afoot, among developers around the world, it wants to decentralize the web and take back the power from those gatekeepers that have profited from centralizing it.
"We are not talking to Facebook and Google about whether or not to introduce a complete change where all their business models are completely upended overnight. We are not asking their permission."