Cables are pictured on the Internet server at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Ecublens, near Lausanne May 9, 2011. (REUTERS/Denis Balibouse )
Technology leaders are meeting in San Francisco this week to discuss making the Internet a more decentralized, secure, and less censored place, with an emphasis on privacy and preserving history.
The event, called the Decentralized Web Summit, is focused on locking the web open.
The idea is that the Web could be a place where governments dont spy or censor information, where culture is preserved, and information is stored in a decentralized way.
Related: ISIS taps tech for Web radio
The Decentralized Web aims to make the Web open, secure and free of censorship by distributing data, processing, and hosting across millions of computers around the world, with no centralized control, the summits website declares.
Among the speakers at the summit is Tim Berners-Lee, the 1989 creator of the World Wide Web. He spoke about its current shortcomings with The New York Times.
It controls what people see, creates mechanisms for how people interact, Berners-Lee said. Its been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing peoples content, taking you to the wrong websites that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create.
Related: Case shines spotlight on translation, tech in policing
Another focus is on new digital payment systems a move away from entering credit card information and towards new tech that gives people more control and takes the focus away from advertising.
Ad revenue is the only model for too many people on the web now, Berners-Lee told the Times. People assume todays consumer has to make a deal with a marketing machine to get stuff for free, even if theyre horrified by what happens with their data. Imagine a world where paying for things was easy on both sides.
He added that he thought the Web was already decentralized, it just needed more options than one search engine, for example.
Follow news about the summit on Twitter: #DWebSummit
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/06/08/inventor-world-wide-web-wants-it-to-change.html
