Berners-Lee Solid Project

More on Berners-Lee's SOlid Project, aimed to save the Web.  Informative.  Un-wall the gardens?  Better privacy and identity?   Too late?

Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid Project: Can It Save the Web?    By David Cardinal 

Not everyone thinks the web needs saving. After all, it’s a bigger and more essential part of our lives than almost anyone could have predicted when Tim Berners-Lee first wrote a browser for what became the World Wide Web. But the original peer-to-peer, open-protocol, read-write architecture has been overshadowed in many ways by walled gardens like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. One reason for that is that the original web protocols were limited. While they provided the means for browsing and linking, they didn’t come with standard solutions for identity, personal data storage, or social applications. So corporations stepped in to fill the void with their own best interests at heart and not those of their customers or the web at large. Decades later, Berners-Lee thinks he has a solution: his Solid (SOcial LInked Data) system.

Berners-Lee Says we can Control our Data, and Need to do it Now

But how will this influence the economics of the Web in the last decade?  Will the economics be there to continue to drive its development?  Or will it go back to an excellent academic system?  Reading more.   Excellent description here, and see also  https://solid.inrupt.com/

One Small Step for the Web…
By Tim Berners-Lee in Medium

Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) w3.org, the place to agree on web standards. Founded webfoundation.org - let the web serve humanity

I’ve always believed the web is for everyone. That’s why I and others fight fiercely to protect it. The changes we’ve managed to bring have created a better and more connected world. But for all the good we’ve achieved, the web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas.

Today, I believe we’ve reached a critical tipping point, and that powerful change for the better is possible — and necessary.

This is why I have, over recent years, been working with a few people at MIT and elsewhere to develop Solid, an open-source project to restore the power and agency of individuals on the web.

Solid changes the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value. As we’ve all discovered, this hasn’t been in our best interests. Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance — by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way.  ... "

Also see: https://solid.inrupt.com/ for more about their approach.