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Exclusive: Tim Berners-Lee tells us his radical new plan to upend the World Wide Web
/www.fastcompany.com ^ | 09.29.18 12:01 am | Katrina Brooker

Posted on 09/29/2018 7:01:04 PM PDT by Paladin2

This week, Berners-Lee will launch Inrupt, a startup that he has been building, in stealth mode, for the past nine months. Backed by Glasswing Ventures, its mission is to turbocharge a broader movement afoot, among developers around the world, to decentralize the web and take back power from the forces that have profited from centralizing it. In other words, it’s game on for Facebook, Google, Amazon. For years now, 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. But for Berners-Lee, the time for dreaming is over.

“We have to do it now,” he says, displaying an intensity and urgency that is uncharacteristic for this soft-spoken academic. “It’s a historical moment.” Ever since revelations emerged that Facebook had allowed people’s data to be misused by political operatives, Berners-Lee has felt an imperative to get this digital idyll into the real world. In a post published this weekend, Berners-Lee explains that he is taking a sabbatical from MIT to work full time on Inrupt. The company will be the first major commercial venture built off of Solid, a decentralized web platform he and others at MIT have spent years building.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Technical
KEYWORDS: bernerslee; decentralization; inrupt; internet; robberbarons; solid; timbernerslee
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Trust Busting the Robber Barons...
1 posted on 09/29/2018 7:01:04 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Paladin2

It’s excerpted. [ who gots da time fo dat cut and paste...]

More at the link...


2 posted on 09/29/2018 7:02:18 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Paladin2
Sounds like a pump-and-dump scheme to me.

Not one word about what his great idea actually is.

Probably some kind of peer-to-peer network where everybody is running their own mini-server, but the bandwidth and latency problems would be exponential.

3 posted on 09/29/2018 7:04:06 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Science is a method, not a belief system.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Sounds like some kind of distributed data crypt.


4 posted on 09/29/2018 7:07:24 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

it`s a bulletin board circa 1990


5 posted on 09/29/2018 7:20:55 PM PDT by bunkerhill7 (h)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Sounds like a pump-and-dump scheme to me.
Not one word about what his great idea actually is.

It's all out there if you cared to look.

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA FBCS pretty much invented the web. He put up the first site and page on 8/6/1991. It is still there (http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html).

In those early days, sites that ran web servers allowed users to put up their own information, files, programs, etc. to share. Users controlled their information. Before the web, there were gopher, ftp, and nfs (file shares spanning the network) services.

The first thing I put up onto the web was an audio file of me pronouncing my last name. That was in 1994 or so.

It seems like Berners-Lee is looking to go back to that model.

6 posted on 09/29/2018 7:29:23 PM PDT by IndispensableDestiny
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To: IndispensableDestiny

So everybody has their own server.


7 posted on 09/29/2018 7:30:43 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Science is a method, not a belief system.)
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To: Paladin2

More...

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3691907/posts


8 posted on 09/29/2018 7:32:48 PM PDT by Openurmind
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To: IndispensableDestiny
"It seems like Berners-Lee is looking to go back to that model. "

Sounds like a new way to restore individual freedom on a YUGE Gorebal network.

We'll see.

9 posted on 09/29/2018 7:32:57 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Openurmind

I never look/search.

Ain’t nobodys gots time fo dat....


10 posted on 09/29/2018 7:33:59 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Openurmind

And, apparently, there is this:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3691866/posts


11 posted on 09/29/2018 7:35:21 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Probably some kind of peer-to-peer network where everybody is running their own mini-server, but the bandwidth and latency problems would be exponential.

Haven't read the article (who has the time?) but it would be better to put everyone in the cloud. I can run a crapload of services and store a ton of data for $5 / month and could probably host 100 more people in my virtual server. The bottom line is people's data is already in the cloud, just cloud that they don't control. We need an architecture where everybody controls their part of the cloud just as they control their desktop OS (well as long as they use Linux or other OS that users can control).

12 posted on 09/29/2018 7:36:03 PM PDT by palmer (...if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive)
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To: palmer

https://www.inrupt.com/blog/one-small-step-for-the-web


13 posted on 09/29/2018 7:50:15 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Paladin2

In the centralized web, data is kept in silos–controlled by the companies that build them, like Facebook and Google. In the decentralized web, there are no silos.

Starting this week, developers around the world will be able to start building their own decentralized apps with tools through the Inrupt site. Berners-Lee will spend this fall crisscrossing the globe, giving tutorials and presentations to developers about Solid and Inrupt.

When asked about this, Berners-Lee says flatly: “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.”

Game on.


14 posted on 09/29/2018 7:50:57 PM PDT by ALX
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To: ALX

When going to various websites using NoScripts on Firefox, I never cease to be amazed at the number of other sites wanting to get a piece of my info.

InfoWarz indeed...


15 posted on 09/29/2018 7:54:58 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Paladin2

Definetly. What Berners-Lee is doing will mostly likely take off. Not just Conservatives as we know want out of this centralized web that’s Orwellian to the extreme. These new decentralized “silos” and Blockchain can erase this fraud we are forced to use...and it’s lame anyways...


16 posted on 09/29/2018 8:08:53 PM PDT by ALX
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
So everybody has their own server.

Well, no.

Imagine an app to replace Facebook, or even the Free Republic. The app may be free (for the Free Republic) or paid for (the Facebook Replacement). Rather than all your postings and data being on servers or data centers that you have no control over, that information is in a "pod" that belongs to you. Obviously, you'd have to pay for that "pod" on some remote site (or keep it local), but it's yours to do with as you please. Multiple apps could use your "pod." You can develop or acquire apps to put in your "pod" and you control access to those apps.

17 posted on 09/29/2018 8:11:04 PM PDT by IndispensableDestiny
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To: ALX

Though Stallman and ESR may be socialists, they have a strong component of the original hippie libertarian ethic running through their work over time.

That ethic seems to be integral to the being of many folk still.

Just leave me alone to be myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9EKIcAqXk

[I’ll just note that young folks seemed to be thinner in the 60’s/70’s]


18 posted on 09/29/2018 8:23:32 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Paladin2

Dude simply stole the ludicrous (but hilarious) plot from the season before last of “Silicon Valley” ...


19 posted on 09/29/2018 8:58:50 PM PDT by catnipman ((Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!))
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To: catnipman

I’m a bit [permanently] behind on my current Popular media cultural references. So, you have me at a disadvantage.


20 posted on 09/29/2018 9:16:13 PM PDT by Paladin2
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