Decentralized Web: Although the Internet has created millions of new opportunities for people around the world and brought human knowledge to anyone with a connection, it has also created many problems that seem impossible to solve.
“Edward Snowden has shown that we have inadvertently created the world’s largest surveillance network with the internet,” said Brewster Kahle, who is the head of the Internet Archive.
And he’s not wrong: governments around the world monitor exactly what their citizens access online, and we have often encountered censorship in an attempt to control what they think.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, believes that the way the internet works today “completely undermines the creative spirit of people.”
To this end, Berners-Lee, Brewster Kahle and other pioneers of the modern Web are brainstorming ideas for a new kind of information network that cannot be controlled by governments or powered by giant corporations like Amazon and Google.
Along with other experts such as TCP/IP protocol co-creator Vint Cerf, Mozilla Project's Mitchell Baker, and Electronic Frontier Foundation's special advisor Cory Doctorow, they will gather at the Decentralized Web in San Francisco to discuss how to create and sustain the new kind of Internet.
Participants and speakers at the Decentralized Web will also discuss the use of enhanced encryption methods for more accountability from authorities seeking access to data, as well as reducing content creators and publishers' reliance on advertising revenue by developing secure, instant, subscriber-based cryptocurrency payment methods.
But while it's comforting to know that great minds are preparing to tackle issues that affect every Web user, it's scary to think that all those who found a way to ruin the Internet into what it is today will likely ruin the next one as well.
The Decentralized Web Summit started today, June 8th, and ends tomorrow, the 9th. You can watch it livestream on the event site.
