According to Tim Berners-Lee there is a need to re-think certain aspects of the internet as it is now.
The inventor of the world wide web, which delivers information over the internet, wants to give users back control of their data.
Berners-lee has been working with engineers at MIT on something called Solid, from his company Inrupt.
The idea is to allow people a way to own what’s online, he told Fast Company . This will allow them to feel that personal and sensitive data is kept safe.
It will use things he calls "pods" or "personal online data stores" which would be personal storage for data that would remain the user’s control.
Berners-Lee also has an idea where people can run their own version of Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant. By giving people a pod in which to store their data he hopes they will trust it with more sensitive information.
Called "Charlie" the voice assistant could hold medical records or financial information without the need to send it to a company like Amazon or Google. You’d use the assistant as usual, but only you would have access to your pod.
The idea isn’t to replace the world wide web, but to build upon it to provide answers to the problems we’ve recently seen with data breaches on services like Facebook.
The project will be open source, which means anyone is free to build upon it. Solid will also be open to scrutiny from anyone who cares to look into its code – much like operating systems like Linux.
Berners-Lee will continue to look for funding for the project. He is taking a sabbatical from MIT to carry on his work with Inrupt.
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