Tim Berners-Lee, who is better known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, is launching a startup called Inrupt, which he has reportedly been building in stealth since the past nine months. According to the Fast Company, the startup is backed by Glasswing Ventures and is aimed at decentralizing the web and “take back power from the forces (Facebook, Google, Amazon) that have profited from centralizing it.” The report claims that ever since revelations were made regarding Facebook’s involvement in the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal and Russian meddling in the US presidential elections in 2016, Berners-Lee has been wanting to introduce a better alternative for users. “The intent is world domination.
We have to do it now. It’s a historical moment,” Berners-Lee said. The Britain-born scientist took a sabbatical from MIT to build this “commercial venture off of Solid -- a decentralized web platform he and others at MIT have spent years building.” Solid is a two-year-old project that has made some serious headway towards making a decentralised web a reality. “There are people working in the lab trying to imagine how the Web could be different. How society on the web could look different.
What could happen if we give people privacy and we give people control of their data, We are building a whole eco-system,” Berners-Lee told Vanity Fair. Anyone can join and contribute to this open-source project. Berners-Lee hopes that Inrupt “is just the first of many companies to emerge from Solid.” According to the report, the Inrupt app features a simple-looking web page with several tabs and has the engineer’s to-do list, calendar, chats and address book.
Fast Company says the app uses Solid’s technology and allows Berners-Lee to access all his data. “It’s like a mashup of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify, and WhatsApp.” The difference is, of course, related to data.
The report says that on Solid, all the information will be under users’ control. The data that is being created or added on Solid exists within a Solid pod - an acronym for Personal Online Data store. Anyone who will use the platform will get a Solid identity and a Solid pod. Berners-Lee is also reportedly working on a decentralized version of an Alexa-like smart assistant, which he calls Charlie.
He says that with Charlie, people will own all their data. As per the report, the developers globally will soon be able to start building their own decentralised apps with tools through the Inrupt site. Berners-Lee is also planning to raise more funds.
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