Resetting the Web

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“The future is still so much bigger than the past." - Sir Tim Berners-Lee --


As we all know, the World Wide Web (almost always erroneously refered to as 'The Internet' or ' My internet') was invented only in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee (blog posts, passim), going online the following year. One thing that became groaningly obvious by the late '90's was that the whole thing would be subsumed by commercial interests very rapidly, and this as we all know, is what came to pass.

Well, Berners-Lee, like an awful lot of other people, although he has more and better cause than most; is now seeking to claw back some of the original purpose and intention of his original creation, in the form of Solid, an information sharing system that appears to owe much to his original concept, from the early years at CERN. He has with others, formed a company called Inrupt.

I'm just looking into what their methodologies are, and what they can afford me and people I know - but it looks, like the original World Wide Web; to be a collaborative document and chat oriented environment aimed at academics and creatives who want to work together and share information without the burden of  business breathing down their necks and filching manipulating their data for commercial gain. It sounds like an interesting project, and I'm kind of gratified that the working environment as it is at the moment is quite plain and unadorned, much like the original web; the big difference being the multi-way communication it affords, with document creation, editing and sharing up front and centre; in a controlled, secure and user-definable environment. More later...

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