Here is a very interesting article published on Bloomberg on Tim Berners-Lee nothing more and nothing less than the inventor of the Web. This one leans towards a radical proposal. Instead of leaving our online data at the mercy of big tech platforms and governments, we should control it. Access to our small part of the web or “personal cloud” should be subject to authorization.
The idea seems reasonable in theory, but in practice it is a daunting task. Today’s Internet is not the flashy, motley network that emerged after Berners-Lee first shaped it in 1989, but a landscape dominated by large corporations like Google of Alphabet Inc. and Facebook from Meta Platforms Inc.
In many parts of the world, Facebook is the Internet and the only experience people have of the web. Most apps function as guardians of our personal data.
Berners-Lee wants to reverse this dynamic. For the past decade, he has observed with growing dismay the evolution of the web: we have traded our data for convenience, connecting to the “ecosystems” of Apple Inc. and Google in order to be able to move our profiles – full of identifying details and interests – between email clients and online browsers, seamlessly.
Our data spread everywhere, without control
The platforms insist that they protect all this information and respect our privacy, but Berners-Lee believes that is not enough. Our data is scattered across the servers of the Big Tech and on countless other companies, without our being able to control them.
His solution: a personal digital wallet
Its answer is a digital wallet, a part of the Internet that stores everything from your medical records to your social media posts, from your purchase history to your family photos. But, unlike the siled apps and services we use today, wallets let you control exactly who sees what.
Testing of its new Internet in Belgium
Berners-Lee has been working on this radical idea for five years through a start-up called Inrupt. In a first trial, the Belgian region of Flanders is rolling out its personal data pod system to 7 million citizens, using it as a basis for providing social services and sharing data more securely with businesses. Earlier this year, five Belgian hospitals began storing information about patient visits in data pods, a process that Berners-Lee says can help comply with the General Data Protection Regulation. data (GDPR) of Europe.
Too little too late because of AI?
But the initiative is swimming against a powerful wave, with artificial intelligence assistants becoming our digital guardians. Microsoft’s Copilot is integrated into Windows and Office, Google weaves Gemini into its ecosystem and Apple Intelligence has been integrated into the iPhone operating system. These assistants could increasingly influence our choices when it comes to shopping, dining, and our schedules.
Inrupt
You might think that a web increasingly driven by AI and its content will be less open and less free, but Mr Berners-Lee is optimistic. “It’s completely within our control. If you go home and write AI models and spread fake news and fill the world with garbage, the world will become very bland. If you spread false information, it will become false.”
Opposite, imposing web giants
Instead, he’d like to see greater control of our data through decentralized systems like his and more public information about where content comes from. This means more provenance labels on photos and videos to show they were generated by AI.
But the economics of AI development make this effort increasingly tricky. Building sophisticated AI models requires enormous amounts of data. However, this is personal information that technology giants have amassed and exploited for the benefit of their shareholders over the course of more than a decade. They are not ready to give up this advantage.
Another challenge is humans’ habit of exchanging personal information for convenience, an exchange that seems increasingly valuable with AI assistants. Scaling a model like Inrupt’s would require unprecedented cooperation between governments, businesses and citizens.
Lots of people to convince
This does not mean that the pods of personal data are condemned. The deployment in Flanders could prove that government-backed systems offer enough concrete benefits to overcome user inertia. The success of this trial could convince other regions to follow suit, particularly in areas such as health care or social services.
But for most other users of the Internet created by Berners-Lee, the future is clear: our personal information will remain scattered across countless databases, increasingly processed by artificial intelligence systems that serve the interests of large technology conglomerates. It’s not that there aren’t better solutions, but the companies shaping the future of AI have too much to lose by giving users control of their digital lives.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Inrupt
At the origin of the Web
The idea for the Web came to Berners-Lee in 1989, while he was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Initially intended to help scientists share data with each other, he published the source code for free in order to make the web a platform open to everyone, and the web took off. For more than thirty years, he has been trying to bring the web back to this idea of freedom and democracy.
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