Author | Ryan Browne
Translator | Mingzhi Mountain
Planning | Tina
Tim Berners Lee, the father of the World Wide Web and a British computer scientist, said at the 2022 Web Summit that blockchain is not a viable solution for building the next generation Internet, and we should ignore it.
He has his own Web decentralization project called Solid.
Berners Lee said at the Web Summit in Lisbon, "When discussing the impact of new technologies, it is important that you understand the true meaning of the terms we are discussing, not just stay at the level of popular words."
"In fact, it is shameful that Web3 was used on the blockchain by the people of Ethereum. In fact, Web3 is not the Web at all."
In the technology industry, Web3 is a vague term used to describe a hypothetical future Internet version. It is more decentralized than it is now and is not dominated by a few giant players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
It involves some new technologies, including blockchain, cryptocurrency and non homogenous tokens.
Although Berners Lee's goal is to free personal data from the control of large technology companies, he does not believe that the distributed ledger technology blockchain supporting cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will be the solution.
He said, "Blockchain protocols may be useful for some things, but not for Solid." Solid is a Web decentralization project led by Berners Lee. "They are too slow, too expensive, and too public. Personal data storage must be fast, cheap, and private."
He said, "Ignore the so-called Web3, those random Web3 built on the blockchain, we will not use it on Solid."
Berners Lee said that people often confuse Web3 with "Web 3.0", which is his proposal to reshape the Internet. His startup, Inrupt, aims to let users control their data, including how to access and store data. TechCrunch reported that the company obtained a round of financing of 30 million dollars in December last year.
Berners Lee said that personal data is owned by a few large technology platforms, such as Google and Facebook, which use these data to "lock us on their platforms".
He said, "The result is a big data competition. The winner is the company that controls the most data, and the others are the losers."
His startup aims to solve this problem in three ways:
The global "single sign on" function allows anyone to log in from anywhere. A login ID that allows users to share data with others. A "generic API" or application programming interface that allows applications to extract data from any source.
Berners Lee is not the only well-known technology personage who is skeptical of Web3. Some Silicon Valley leaders also raised objections to Web3, such as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Critics say that Web3 is prone to the same problems as cryptocurrency, such as fraud and security flaws.
Original link:
//www.cnbc.com/2022/11/04/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-wants-us-to-ignore-web3.html
Statement: This article is an InfoQ translation, and reproduction without permission is prohibited.
