Culture Tim Berners-Lee Launches Open Source Project Solid To Start A “New Internet” - Inventor of the Interwebs decides to reinvent it

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https://news.google.com/stories/CAA...2NISnZhbVZqZENnQVAB?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
https://news.google.com/stories/CAA...2NISnZhbVZqZENnQVAB?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

https://www.newsweek.com/inventor-world-wide-web-plans-new-internet-rival-google-facebook-1145086

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is launching a startup that seeks to rival Facebook, Amazon and Google.

The technology legend’s latest project, Inrupt, is a company that builds off of Berners-Lee’s open source platform Solid. Solid allows users to choose where their data is stored and what people are allowed to have access to what information.

In an exclusive interview with Fast Company, Berners-Lee joked that the intent behind Inrupt is “world domination.”

“We have to do it now,” he said of the startup. “It’s a historical moment.”

The app uses Solid’s technology to allow people to create their own “personal online data store” or a POD. It can contain contact lists, to-do lists, calendar, music library and other personal and professional tools. It’s like Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack and Spotify are all available on one browser and all at the same time.

What’s unique about the personal online data store is that it is completely up to the user who can access what kind of information. The company calls it “personal empowerment through data.”

The idea for Inrupt, according to the company’s CEO John Bruce, is for the company to bring resources, process and appropriate skills to help make Solid available to everyone. The company currently consists of Berners-Lee, Bruce, a security platform bought by IBM, some on-staff developers contracted to work on the project, and a community of volunteer coders.

Starting this week, technology developers around the world could create their own decentralized apps using the tools available on the Inrupt website.

im Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is launching a startup that seeks to rival Facebook, Amazon and Google.

The technology legend’s latest project, Inrupt, is a company that builds off of Berners-Lee’s open source platform Solid. Solid allows users to choose where their data is stored and what people are allowed to have access to what information.

In an exclusive interview with Fast Company, Berners-Lee joked that the intent behind Inrupt is “world domination.”

“We have to do it now,” he said of the startup. “It’s a historical moment.”

The app uses Solid’s technology to allow people to create their own “personal online data store” or a POD. It can contain contact lists, to-do lists, calendar, music library and other personal and professional tools. It’s like Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack and Spotify are all available on one browser and all at the same time.

What’s unique about the personal online data store is that it is completely up to the user who can access what kind of information. The company calls it “personal empowerment through data.”

The idea for Inrupt, according to the company’s CEO John Bruce, is for the company to bring resources, process and appropriate skills to help make Solid available to everyone. The company currently consists of Berners-Lee, Bruce, a security platform bought by IBM, some on-staff developers contracted to work on the project, and a community of volunteer coders.

Starting this week, technology developers around the world could create their own decentralized apps using the tools available on the Inrupt website.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...unveils-radical-plan-fabled-New-Internet.html

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has unveiled his plans for a 'New Internet' that would decentralize the system and take power back from current kings including Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Berners-Lee's start-up Inrupt is launching an app system this week that will allow users to regulate what personal information they share on the web and how that information is stored.

With Inrupt, users can create their own 'personal online data store' - or POD - to house anything from contact lists to calendar items to music libraries.

Put in simpler terms, the technology essentially brings together the functions of programs such as Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify and WhatsApp - all on one browser, all at one time.

Berners-Lee said the intent behind Inrupt is 'world domination' in an exclusive interview with Fast Company published Saturday.

The site noted that the comment was said in jest - but was also true.

'It’s a historical moment,' Berners-Lee said of the startup he's been building for the past nine months. 'We have to do it now.'

As of this week, tech developers around the globe can create their own decentralized apps using the tools available on the Inrupt website.

Berners-Lee is no stranger to the forefront of the technology industry, having been credited with transforming the internet when he established the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994.

He believes that through Inrupt, he can and will upend the system again, making the long-sought dream of a 'free and open digital utopia' into a reality.

'I’m incredibly optimistic for this next era of the web,' Berners-Lee said.

Central to the tech mogul's philosophy has been shifting control away from online giants who have profited from the web's current centralization and back to individual users.

The Inrupt site will serve as a widely-accessible entry point to the tech legend's already-established open-source platform Solid.

One of Solid's key features is that people are in charge of deciding who can access the information they store within their PODs - which the company refers to as 'personal empowerment through data'.

Inrupt is said to have the potential to completely upend the business models of companies like Facebook and Google, who have raked in profits from quietly selling user information to third parties.

An avid defender of net neutrality, Berners-Lee said: '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.'
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https://fossbytes.com/tim-berners-lee-open-source-project-solid-new-internet/

Due to the continuous torrent of data breaches and scandals like Cambridge Analytica, Tim Berners-Lee is devastated. To fight the powerful forces of the Internet, world wide web inventor has worked on a project called “Solid.”

In collaboration with MIT, the open-source project is build to make web decentralized, snatch power from big players like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. Solid offers tools to create social applications which follow the existing W3C standards. In simple words, you will have a tremendous amount of control over your data.


With Solid, you create this data “pods” (personal online data stores) that can be hosted wherever you want. When an app will ask for your data, Solid will authenticate and give access to the specific pod.

“Solid is guided by the principle of “personal empowerment through data” which we believe is fundamental to the success of the next era of the web. We believe data should empower each of us. With Solid, you will have far more personal agency over data – you decide which apps can access it,” Tim Berner’s wrote in a blog post.

According to Tim, Solid will restore the balance on the web “by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way.”

Moving ahead with the mission of decentralizing the web, Tim has collaborated Solid with Inrupt, a new startup headed by John Bruce which “brings resources, process and appropriate skills to make the promise of Solid a reality.”

In the coming weeks, developers will be able to use Inrupt tools to build their own decentralized apps.
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https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2018/10/tim-berners-lee-protect-web-data.html

In the present era almost every big IT firm selling or providing free services to the users on the name of privacy are actually snatching the privacy from them. If we look upon in last few years from Yahoo to Facebook, we would find very big names in IT which were exploited to data leakage. No doubt there is a big loophole in present internet structure which needs to be fixed but due to their business model in which these corporates are running they cannot afford this.

Tim Berners-Lee the founder of world website and the member of MIT research team has decided to challenge these corporates. He is working on an open source project. The main aim of this project is to decentralize the internet to finish the monopoly of these big IT companies like Facebook, Google, etc.

Tim is working on a tool name “Solid” that will run on the same platform like W3C that will give full access to users about his data privacy. It allows users to control all his data and no one can access to it without users authorization. Solid work in a very simple way, it makes your private online storage known as PODS (personal online data storage). When App needs any access to your data it will first authenticate before providing it.

According to Tim “Solid is guided by the principle of personal empowerment through data which we believe is fundamental to the success of the next era of the web. We believe data should empower each of us”. To accomplish this all he founded a company “Inrupt” with his co-founder John Bruce, where he will work on to develop next stage of Web. No doubt this will be a drum of war for big corporates as it will drastically affect their business model.
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This is great! This time they can build in the government surveillance from the beginning.

Also, Silicon Valley reference goes here.
 
I hope this gets off the ground. The thought of Facebook, Amazon, and Google losing power is worth my money.
 
Can a tech person sum this up for knuckle dragging old men like I who think apple is a food product.
 
moldbug has been trying to do the same thing for like a decade, and look where it got him.
nobody remembers or knows who he is, much less cares.
 
Then I saw a new internet, and a new Kiwi Farms, for the old internet had passed away.
 
Why does this sound familiar?...

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In collaboration with MIT, the open-source project is build to make web decentralized, snatch power from big players like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. Solid offers tools to create social applications which follow the existing W3C standards. In simple words, you will have a tremendous amount of control over your data.
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And that's exactly where it'll fail.

They don't seem to realize if massive social media isn't there, accessible through the magic "e" icon on people's taskbars, nobody's going to go it. Tor is fringe, torrents are fringe, everything that is not social media is extremely fringe and unsupported by the corporations that either create media or create the technology that support and distribute media.
 
The Fool said:
And that's exactly where it'll fail.

They don't seem to realize if massive social media isn't there, accessible through the magic "e" icon on people's taskbars, nobody's going to go it. Tor is fringe, torrents are fringe, everything that is not social media is extremely fringe and unsupported by the corporations that either create media or create the technology that support and distribute media.
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Fine by me, honestly. Social media ruined Internet culture.
 
Problem is shit like this requires infrastructure, if not it's just going to be a hobby thing or for people who need to operate outside of corporate control.
Once infrastructure is built it's only a matter of time before the ideologues take charge and start gatekeeping
 
Broadly, Solid as a "tech advancement" smells way too corporate to me. The head guy is an all business salesman, the 'big names' are being thrown around deliberately; Solid and Inrupt are a simple catchy tags for products rather than the unwieldy jargon I'd expect for serious standards like "http". There's talk of products and problem-solutions, not technology and the future, and there's still no serious guarantee this wont just find a new way to fuck everyone over again while other solutions, ones that would make the businesses currently in power moot, rot.
IPFS is more ambitious, and so far as I can tell way more cutting edge, as well as being made by actual industry outsiders who have no interest in replicating the current oligarchy. The closest thing they have to a sale is "try it" and their media presence is mostly tech sites with industry history, not national publications. The only reason they got big attention was from Cloudfare intentionally throwing them a bone to try and distance themselves from the silicon bonfire about to catch.
There's a bit of blockchain woo, like most new tech, but at least for IPFS it's for-purpose and well applied. Solid ignores the paradigm shift almost entirely in favor of mostly pure design choices that could have been made decades ago.
 
OK, great, so users control who gets to see their data.
Ready to sign up for SolidFacebook, brought to you by the makers of your favorite social network, Facebook? Admission is free, just grant us full read access to your Solid. Click here to accept the TOS!
 
Oh wow another Silicon Valley startup that'll go nowhere or get bought for the patents in a few years.

The Fool said:
torrents are fringe
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I'll disagree, the main reason torrents aren't the most fringe shit out there is because normies can pirate what they care about on there: Free music, movies, TV shows, and games. It can also be used on Android phones and utorrent for Android has over 100+ million downloads. If you look at a laptop a teenager or 20something's used, chances are it'll have utorrent on it. Hell, torrent usage is jumping heavily.

Out of all the things you could consider fringe everybody uses it. On the other hand half the projects that call themselves decentralized in some way, now those are fringe as fuck. They offer nothing a normie could want, let alone any reason for a normie to use it instead of something a web browser can do.
 
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