The web began as a lot of little things, not one or a few big things. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, wanted to make it easy to tie lots of things together, linking pages, preserving their differences in a way that made all those differences immaterial. Those few big things such as Facebook developed the capacity to track users everywhere, build profiles and targeted, sticky newsfeeds, keeping users within their ‘walled gardens’. Without those developing profiles, Facebook would lose its ability to influence its users and centralise the web.
Berners-Lee, angry that his decentralised vision has been thwarted, has set to work on a new invention, one that seeks to restore the power of the profile to the web’s billions of users. Solid—the name of his project—promises to return profile data to the users who create it. Instead of Facebook collecting the list of sites you visit, people you connect with and things you like, Solid provides the capacity for users to expand and manage their own profiles. A user can decide if Facebook gets to use profile data, which data, if any, and for how long. A user can decide to store their profile data with Facebook or on their own smartphone. Solid brings transparency, choice and control to processes that have disappeared from view.
The Solid approach would starve Facebook of the profile data it needs to make itself irresistible to its users, so it’s likely to resist a move to ‘redecentralise’ the web and to respond with even more bright, shiny things to keep users entranced and glued to the site. Berners-Lee takes a longer view, citing the world before the web, when a few giant companies—such as AOL and Microsoft—controlled the online universe. ‘You can make the walled garden very very sweet,’ he says, ‘but the jungle outside is always more appealing in the long term.’
If he’s right and Solid succeeds, liberating user profile data from the companies that mine it to manipulate moods, buying habits, and elections, the future features less Facebook, but more manipulation. The power of the profile—the core of this weaponisation of influence—is here to stay. Anyone who wants power over another now knows to use these profiles. That can’t be stopped. However, we can treat profiles with the respect due to such powerful material.
Solid provides a foundation for a reimagination of the web, offering the opportunity of a path not yet taken, a possibility for a transformation in values, relationships, and economic models. The power of the post-real can belong to us: Berners-Lee will ensure we have that choice. Two thousand four hundred years ago, Socrates commanded, ‘Know thyself.’ Berners-Lee makes a different request: ‘Own thyself.’ Establish control over the data that you create, make sure you are the sole owner of that data.
Computing came naturally to Berners-Lee, as both of his parents worked on the Ferranti Mark I, the first commercial computer. (See computer: The first stored-program machines.) After graduating in 1976 from the University of Oxford, Berners-Lee designed computer software for two years at Plessey Telecommunications Ltd., located in Poole, Dorset, England. Following this, he had several positions in the computer industry, including a stint from June to December 1980 as a software engineering consultant at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva.
While at CERN, Berners-Lee developed a program for himself, called Enquire, that could store information in files that contained connections (“links”) both within and among separate files—a technique that became known as hypertext. After leaving CERN, Berners-Lee worked for Image Computer Systems Ltd., located in Ferndown, Dorset, where he designed a variety of computer systems. In 1984 he returned to CERN to work on the design of the laboratory’s computer network, developing procedures that allowed diverse computers to communicate with one another and researchers to control remote machines. In 1989 Berners-Lee drew up a proposal for creating a global hypertext document system that would make use of the Internet.
His goal was to provide researchers with the ability to share their results, techniques, and practices without having to exchange e-mail constantly. Instead, researchers would place such information “online,” where their peers could immediately retrieve it anytime, day or night. Berners-Lee wrote the software for the first Web server (the central repository for the files to be shared) and the first Web client, or “browser” (the program to access and display files retrieved from the server), between October 1990 and the summer of 1991. The first “killer application” of the Web at CERN was the laboratory’s telephone directory—a mundane beginning for one of the technological wonders of the computer age.
Berners-Lee, angry that his decentralised vision has been thwarted, has set to work on a new invention, one that seeks to restore the power of the profile to the web’s billions of users. Solid—the name of his project—promises to return profile data to the users who create it. Instead of Facebook collecting the list of sites you visit, people you connect with and things you like, Solid provides the capacity for users to expand and manage their own profiles. A user can decide if Facebook gets to use profile data, which data, if any, and for how long. A user can decide to store their profile data with Facebook or on their own smartphone. Solid brings transparency, choice and control to processes that have disappeared from view.
The Solid approach would starve Facebook of the profile data it needs to make itself irresistible to its users, so it’s likely to resist a move to ‘redecentralise’ the web and to respond with even more bright, shiny things to keep users entranced and glued to the site. Berners-Lee takes a longer view, citing the world before the web, when a few giant companies—such as AOL and Microsoft—controlled the online universe. ‘You can make the walled garden very very sweet,’ he says, ‘but the jungle outside is always more appealing in the long term.’
If he’s right and Solid succeeds, liberating user profile data from the companies that mine it to manipulate moods, buying habits, and elections, the future features less Facebook, but more manipulation. The power of the profile—the core of this weaponisation of influence—is here to stay. Anyone who wants power over another now knows to use these profiles. That can’t be stopped. However, we can treat profiles with the respect due to such powerful material.
Solid provides a foundation for a reimagination of the web, offering the opportunity of a path not yet taken, a possibility for a transformation in values, relationships, and economic models. The power of the post-real can belong to us: Berners-Lee will ensure we have that choice. Two thousand four hundred years ago, Socrates commanded, ‘Know thyself.’ Berners-Lee makes a different request: ‘Own thyself.’ Establish control over the data that you create, make sure you are the sole owner of that data.
Computing came naturally to Berners-Lee, as both of his parents worked on the Ferranti Mark I, the first commercial computer. (See computer: The first stored-program machines.) After graduating in 1976 from the University of Oxford, Berners-Lee designed computer software for two years at Plessey Telecommunications Ltd., located in Poole, Dorset, England. Following this, he had several positions in the computer industry, including a stint from June to December 1980 as a software engineering consultant at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva.
While at CERN, Berners-Lee developed a program for himself, called Enquire, that could store information in files that contained connections (“links”) both within and among separate files—a technique that became known as hypertext. After leaving CERN, Berners-Lee worked for Image Computer Systems Ltd., located in Ferndown, Dorset, where he designed a variety of computer systems. In 1984 he returned to CERN to work on the design of the laboratory’s computer network, developing procedures that allowed diverse computers to communicate with one another and researchers to control remote machines. In 1989 Berners-Lee drew up a proposal for creating a global hypertext document system that would make use of the Internet.
His goal was to provide researchers with the ability to share their results, techniques, and practices without having to exchange e-mail constantly. Instead, researchers would place such information “online,” where their peers could immediately retrieve it anytime, day or night. Berners-Lee wrote the software for the first Web server (the central repository for the files to be shared) and the first Web client, or “browser” (the program to access and display files retrieved from the server), between October 1990 and the summer of 1991. The first “killer application” of the Web at CERN was the laboratory’s telephone directory—a mundane beginning for one of the technological wonders of the computer age.
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