What’s All the Fuss About?
Solid
What is it?
New open-source web technology that aims to give you more control over your data by taking it away from online giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook. It’s the brainchild of a certain British individual who thinks the internet has become an “engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas”. You may have heard of him.
Who is it?
Sir Tim Berners-lee (pictured below), inventor of the internet, winner of numerous awards, head of the World Wide Web Consortium, and all-round computing hero. In recent years he’s become disillusioned by how recklessly tech giants treat your data, particularly when “abusing” it for political ends. Previously, he has argued for sites to be regulated, but Solid offers a different solution, which is to decentralise the web.
What does that mean?
He calls it a “revolutionary” attempt to shift who owns your data. Instead of ‘centralising’ your information by handing it to Facebook or Google so they can exploit it to make billion-dollar profits, you get to choose which people, groups and apps can use it. He’s co-founded the company Inrupt ( www. inrupt.com), which will fund the Solid technology.
How does it actually work?
Software developers can use it to build apps within which you can save your private content in a personal online data store (called ‘Pods’), containing anything from contact lists to music playlists. Inrupt says these Pods are like “secure USB sticks for the web that you can access anywhere”. If you want to upload a photo for relatives to see, you can do so through your Pod without having to upload it to Facebook, and thereby avoid giving it any data. Apps could be built that combine the functions of popular tools such as Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Spotify and Whatsapp. Berners-lee is dreaming big with this.
How big?
“World domination”. This ambition, expressed in an interview with the business magazine Fast Company, may have been tongue in cheek, but he’s serious about wrestling back control from Facebook and co. He provided an example of an app built with Solid (see screenshot above), claiming the technology is a “historical moment” that will “restore order” by providing apps that help people “do what they want and need to do – without spying on them”. Amazon may want to take particular heed of this.
Why?
Because Berners-lee is working on a decentralised voice-activated assistant called Charlie that, unlike Amazon’s Alexa, doesn’t own your data. He says you’ll be able to trust it with sensitive info such as health records, children’s school events and financial reports.
What will Amazon say?
Berners-lee doesn’t care. Nor is he bothered what Facebook, Google and others think. He is not “asking their permission” to launch a system that could disrupt their business models “overnight”.
Is he being a bit naive?
Perhaps. We can’t see the internet returning to its earlier state, described by Berners-lee as “a rich selection of blogs and websites”, before the tech giants began to dominate.
Won’t they fight back?
Undoubtedly. They’ve got multi-billion fortunes to protect. But Berners-lee’s idealism will be shared by the many people who don’t like what the internet has become. When the Facebook/ Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March, he called upon his Twitter followers to “build a web that reflects our hopes and fulfils our dreams more than it magnifies our fears and deepens our divisions”. Solid is the first step in this mission.