Creator Of The World Wide Web Wants To Revolutionise The Internet Again

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Since then, his invention grew from a small-scale project seeking to meet the demand for quick information-sharing between scientists around the world to what it is today: the largest repository of digital data in the world. But almost 30 years since its inception, Berners-Lee’s brainchild is not quite what he had in mind. What its founder conceived as an open and democratic platform unrestrained by any central authority is currently fully in control of governments and a few big players such as Google, Facebook or Amazon. The World Wide Web "failed" humanity instead of serving it, the inventor told Vanity Fair's Katrina Brooker.

Devastated to see his creation "debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance", as Vanity Fair puts it, Berners-Lee decided to change the course of history again. He is “determined to fight back through both his celebrity status and, notably, his skill as a coder”, and he wants us to fight with him. Anyone can contribute code to help him build a new software called Solid to re-decentralise the Web and give power over data back to the people who generate it. And to those without coding skills, Berners-Lee suggests that people "go out on the streets" and demand change.

“As public outrage grows over the centralization of the Web, and as enlarging numbers of coders join the effort to decentralize it, he has visions of the rest of us rising up and joining him.”

Brooker penned an insightful article that offers a valuable historical context of the Internet's development told through the concerned eyes of the World Wide Web creator. Resting on a common conviction that every revolution needs a leader, her article puts a face to the growing dissatisfaction with the way the Internet is being managed.