Tim Berners-Lee: please ignore the Web3 nonsense. The future is Solid

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Forward-looking: The creator of the World Wide Web has disavowed Web3 as the future of internet's most successful and popular application. He is proposing Solid, a new decentralized effort not based on blockchain, as a possible solution to the issues the web is facing at the moment.

Tim Berners-Lee is best known as the creator of the World Wide Web, and he is still trying to improve his creation beyond its current state. The future of the web conceived by the British computer scientist, however, doesn't resemble what marketers and startups are trying to sell as the "Web3" decentralized utopia.

Also known as Web 3.0, Web3 describes a hypothetical future version of the World Wide Web incorporating things like decentralization, blockchain and token-based digital transactions, with the purpose of creating a more democratic web platform where Big Tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft aren't holding all the data and contents hostage.

According to Tim Berners-Lee, however, Web3 isn't the web at all: speaking at the Web Summit conference recently held in Lisbon, the computer scientist and head of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) said that it's important to clarify the meaning of words in order to discuss the impact of new technologies. "You have to understand what the terms mean that we're discussing actually mean, beyond the buzzwords," Berners-Lee said.

"Blockchain protocols are too slow, too expensive and too public," according to Berners-Lee

"It's a shame that the actual Web3 name was taken by Ethereum folks for the stuff that they're doing with blockchain," the technologist said, because in his vision blockchain isn't the solution to the problems the modern web is facing right now.

The distributed ledger technology used to verify transactions in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is a solution constantly looking for a problem to solve, and according to Berners-Lee, it will continue to be irrelevant for the future of the web as it is for the future of the world today.

Blockchain protocols are too slow, too expensive, and too public, Berners-Lee said, while personal data stores have to be fast, cheap and private. Web3 will not democratize internet access to data and knowledge, but there is a "Web 3.0" design alternative he is working right now with his startup Inrupt. Its name is Solid, and it avoids using blockchain-derived technology altogether.

Solid is a web decentralization project that aims to radically change the way web applications work today, led by a privacy-by-design principle and bringing data ownership in the hands of users away from Big Tech centralized data centers.

Solid uses several "tricks" to implement a kind of decentralization network which goes beyond current models like BitTorrent, employing a global "single sign-on" feature that lets anyone log in from anywhere, or login IDs that allow users to share their data with others. Additionally, a "common universal API" will let apps pull data from any source within the entire Solid platform.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96577-tim-berners-lee-please-ignore-web3-nonsense-future.html

 

[axiomatic13]

Refreshing to actually hear competent people speak.

 

[dangh]

That's really interesting, need to dig it more...

 

[psycros]

And there it is, finally, because its the only logical way forward. Berners-Lee is promoting the "verified online identity" that I've been touting for well over a decade now. Nearly unhackable identity databases with replication by trusted entities, allowing for multi-source verification: I bet anything that's what he'll be proposing.

 

[Uncle Al]

What? what? who is this guy, Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet!!!! Don't tell me a Govt. Official would actually lie to the American People, would they??? ROFLMAO

 

[sorten]

What? what? who is this guy, Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet!!!! Don't tell me a Govt. Official would actually lie to the American People, would they??? ROFLMAO

WWW is just a single application on the Internet, but I assume you know that and are just having a bit of fun.

I didn't realize the crypto bros decided that the web consortium needed their help.

 

[Dimitrios]

What? what? who is this guy, Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet!!!! Don't tell me a Govt. Official would actually lie to the American People, would they??? ROFLMAO

After reading your comment this came to my mind lol.

 

[BadThad]

The important question....is Tim still using a 14" CRT?

 

[mosu]

The important question....is Tim still using a 14" CRT?

It is 15", I had that model too.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

That's really interesting, need to dig it more...

"Can you dig it?!?!?!"

I'm a victim of childhood memories. Anybody know the movie?

 

[Q Wales]

"Can you dig it?!?!?!"

I'm a victim of childhood memories. Anybody know the movie?

The Warriors, the dude who gets shot right at the beginning of the film?

 

[NikoBB]

The only thing that limits the free exchange of information is the intentional (collusion) not to introduce the global use of IP6 by providers of all countries (otherwise how to steal money from customers for "white" IP4?). Which allows (if desired) people to make static p2p networks without centralized dns directories and contact books of social networks and instant messengers (like public phone books of the past).

The second is mail services deliberately imposed on us in such a way that we (the majority of the population due to the inability to independently organize such a service at home 24x365) could not avoid publishing our private data in such a priori immoral systems as Gmail and everyone else. Because the mail service has long been required to be built into every router on the planet, as the minimum allowable minimum of the service. Many financial services don't even bother with transferring private data through such services to clients, excluding other encrypted options for obtaining private information every day. For example, account statements, brokerage reports, and the like, when transmitted to a client via public mail, MUST be encrypted with the client's public key and must be read only on the client side through decoding with a private key, which excludes the reading of such reports and correspondence with counterparties by the owners of such public services. But then the owners of such services will simply demand a fee from you, right? And then it will a priori become more profitable for you to organize your personal mail server at home, right? Which by the way today is worth a penny. =)

In the same way, social networks deliberately drive you into a concentration camp by forcibly collecting your phone numbers and linking to them the entire pool of information that you and your network connections generate every day. When registering a new account. You cannot avoid such a procedure intentionally, because. these are the policies of all social networks. Even the liar Pavel Durov with his Telegram has long recognized this and that he cooperates with government agencies of all countries, handing over objectionable people, and handing them over is easy - after all, their phone number is known in advance, right?

Fourth, practically on the planet there is a copyist collusion with manufacturers of HDD drives, because it is clearly seen that at current retail prices for HDDs, all data centers automatically go down the drain. This means that they are quietly buying high-capacity HDD models in bulk for several times cheaper than retail buyers. And this sharply limits the development of peer-to-peer networks and torrent trackers for a simple reason - with expensive disks, people cannot store capacious content for a long time and distribute it for a long time - they do not have enough space for a new one. They are forced to remove it. Thus, over time, folk data libraries become less and less accessible in terms of the number of seeds. This trend can be easily checked online on any tracker - the old high content practically loses seeds (especially high-speed ones) after 2-3 years of high content appearance. Trackers developed the most until 2011, when HDDs doubled in capacity in 2-2.5 years and cost the same as before. This trend has finally stopped since 2015.

Thus, manufacturers of hardware, software, TNCs and social networks are not interested in encrypted p2p transactions between ordinary citizens, as this automatically excludes the model - the client as a business and the cynical immoral trade in his private data. Any attempts to build a private p2p internet are severely suppressed by this whole global party of large lobbies.

These problems can only be solved at a coercive legislative level, forcing businesses to certain rigidly regulated behaviors and business patterns under fear of powerful legislative punishment and losses, and nothing else. But the majority of the population is illiterate in these matters, which this party successfully takes advantage of, cynically collecting their private data and trading it freely right and left.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

The Warriors, the dude who gets shot right at the beginning of the film?

"Eggzactly right!"

Oh my God. I responded with another movie quote. Know this one?

 

[yannus]

And there it is, finally, because its the only logical way forward. Berners-Lee is promoting the "verified online identity" that I've been touting for well over a decade now. Nearly unhackable identity databases with replication by trusted entities, allowing for multi-source verification: I bet anything that's what he'll be proposing.

So that we could be tracked in every single web activity ?

 

[yannus]

It is 15", I had that model too.

17", if you zoom in the picture you'll see the a 7 ;-)

 

[mosu]

Same model, different screen size...

 

[zulu53]

So that we could be tracked in every single web activity ?

Could be? As in would it be possible? Yes - most things on the internet regarding tracking are possible. But probable - no. The effort would need to be considerable in time and cost so would only be justified by very well funded government agencies with nothing else to do with their time. And even then they would have to show some benefit in tracking you (as compared to one of the other 7 billion people that they could track. It might come as a surprise to many (but no if you were brought up in Africa) 99.99999% of humans are just not worth tracking for the effort involved. Now if you choose to be tracked (by allowing webrowser location tracking) then the effort is small and (at least to the advertisers) the benefits are large.

 

[NikoBB]

Could be? As in would it be possible? Yes - most things on the internet regarding tracking are possible. But probable - no. The effort would need to be considerable in time and cost so would only be justified by very well funded government agencies with nothing else to do with their time. And even then they would have to show some benefit in tracking you (as compared to one of the other 7 billion people that they could track. It might come as a surprise to many (but no if you were brought up in Africa) 99.99999% of humans are just not worth tracking for the effort involved. Now if you choose to be tracked (by allowing webrowser location tracking) then the effort is small and (at least to the advertisers) the benefits are large.

The automatic collection of data from hundreds of millions of people, thanks to the technologies used in Big Data, allows authoritarian officials and authorities (and they are almost all of them if they are allowed to act this way) to collect key data and analyze political, civil and other activities dangerous to them, almost automatically , at minimal cost compared to the efforts that ordinary activists will have to apply to get rid of the deliberate and pre-imposed surveillance of them. This leads to the rapid formation of digital totalitarianism.
What we observe clearly and clearly even in the "heart of democracy" - the United States. What can we say about authoritarian countries sliding into totalitarian ones? Is it necessary to say that the stupid connivance of the majority of lazy, illiterate and most often cowardly inhabitants in such cases quickly leads to the formation of a totalitarian regime and state? China, Russia are already is that. Well, don't you want to move there and live happily there? Many countries are on the way there. And including Europe and the USA.

The usual such nonsense is written by paid bots (I.e. villains) from such totalitarian countries or just another thoughtless and technically / socially illiterate inhabitants in "developed" countries, of which, as recent events have shown, alas, there are more than enough. To the great regret of all progressive and adequate people who still remain on the planet.