Between Concern and Hope: Sir Tim Berners-Lee Reflects on the Web’s Past and What Lies Ahead
Thirty-five years after the invention of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor, expressed his views on the current state of his invention and why he thinks it is not what he envisioned it to be. Now working on developing the Solid protocol, Berners-Lee predicted three likely outcomes in tech going forward.
- On Tuesday, March 12 this week, Sir Tim Berners-Lee blogged about his views on the current state of his 35-year-old creation, the World Wide Web, and why he thinks it is not what he envisioned it to be.
- The computer scientist, who now serves as the CTO of Inrupt, a company he co-founded to develop the Solid protocol and usher in Web 3.0, shared three predictions with CNBC.
Thirty-five years ago, on March 12, Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), proposed a new file and information-sharing system for the internet that would eventually become the World Wide Web and change communications forever.
However, Berners-Lee, later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2011 for his contributions, isn’t happy with how things have turned out. He believes the three Cs he sought – to enable collaboration, foster compassion and generate creativity – were lost decades ago.
“The first decade of the web fulfilled that promise — the web was decentralized with a long-tail of content and options, it created small, more localized communities, provided individual empowerment and fostered huge value. Yet in the past decade, instead of embodying these values, the web has instead played a part in eroding them,” Berners-Lee wrote in a blog on the 35th anniversary of founding the web.
He cites the “self-interest of several corporations” by segmenting the web, which has led to control of information, exploitative patterns, monopolization, and the failure of governance as contributing factors to the breakdown of the web. Berners-Lee added, “The rapid advancement of AI has exacerbated these concerns, proving that issues on the web are not isolated but rather deeply intertwined with emerging technologies.”
The solution, according to Berners-Lee, is building experiences around people, creating a human-centered web instead of building business models. And this movement is already in motion, Berners-Lee said, citing decentralized social platforms Bluesky and Mastodon, podcasts, and Github as examples.
He also highlights the relevance of the Solid, a decentralized protocol Berners-Lee designed and currently developed by his venture Inrupt to deal with mismanaged user data, which intends to provide users with a personal online data store or POD.
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A POD thus eliminates data silos, each managed and owned by companies, which makes it difficult to access. It inverses today’s paradigm and puts the user data at the center of applications, empowering users to decide which apps can access it. A possible nod to how Web 3.0 (as opposed to blockchain-based Web3 concept) would look?
That’s one of Berners-Lee’s predictions when speaking with CNBC, i.e., users will get ownership and control of data back to users. This effort for identity management and access control will come to fruition soon, even in the context of virtual and augmented reality devices.
Another prediction Berners-Lee made is that AI assistants will reign supreme regarding users’ web engagement. Examples include AI-driven smartphones (Galaxy AI in the Samsung Galaxy S24 and Gemini in the Google Pixel 8 series), the new rabbit r1 announced at CES 2024, the new Humane AI Pin launched at MWC Barcelona 2024, etc.
“You will have an AI assistant, which you can trust, and it works for you, like a doctor,” Berners-Lee said, adding, “but it’s something we may have to fight for.” Humans’ engagement with the web will be indirect as AI assistants take over tasks.
Robert Blumofe, CTO at tech firm Akamai, told CNBC recently, “You can imagine a world years from now where the web is a realm of AI agents and humans no longer effectively use the web.”
“It would all be done through AI agents; you would never go directly to your bank account online, or your health provider online, or any e-commerce sites,” Blumofe said. “Human beings can go back to our lives in the physical world greeting each other face to face as a physical experience, rather than a virtual experience.”
The third and final prediction from Berners-Lee is the possibility that a Big Tech company will be mandated to break up under regulatory powers. “Things are changing so quickly. AI is changing very, very quickly. There are monopolies in AI. Monopolies changed pretty quickly back in the web,” Berners-Lee said.
“Maybe at some point in the future, agencies will have to work to break up big companies, but we don’t know which company that will be.”
It is important to note that existing privacy and antitrust laws have managed to curtail Big Tech dominance only so far, given the power they yield.
Do you agree or disagree with Sir Tim Berners-Lee? Share with us on LinkedIn, X, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!
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