The World Wide Web has done what its clunky name describes: it has meshed together the digital globe. It has connected 5.5bn people, made vast amounts of information available and spawned an extraordinarily dynamic digital economy. It is now hard to imagine a world in which users could not email each other, share research on quantum mechanics or cat videos and buy a mattress topper on Temu.
But, as its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has lamented, the technology’s original promise of generating a creative, collaborative and universal community of users has been despoiled. Exclusionary walled gardens of content, the spread of disinformation and the rise of addictive, and often toxic, social media have all degraded the experience. Does the transformation by artificial intelligence offer the chance to reinvent the web?
Berners-Lee certainly hopes so, as he describes in his latest book This Is For Everyone. In his view, AI will bring about the greatest technological shift of our lifetimes — and it’s important not to mess it up. Too much talk about AI, he writes, is between the boomers and the doomers. But as he explains, the real, hard questions about AI’s impact may be determined by technical issues, design choices and protocols.
The challenge is to turn our online attention economy, in which giant corporations battle to capture and monetise our time, into an intention economy that serves the individual’s needs and preserves their privacy. “Fortunately — and I’m very optimistic about this — the paradigm shift of AI offers us a unique opportunity to hit the reset button,” he writes.
Yet if the intention economy is to thrive it must enable individuals to control their own data. Berners-Lee favours the Fediverse, a nascent network of interconnected digital services and social media, including Bluesky, Mastodon and Matrix, that relies on open protocols. One such protocol is Solid, being commercialised by Berners-Lee’s company Inrupt, which enables users to control their own agentic data pods, or wallets, and grant access to trusted services.
Other developers, universities and organisations are also devising ways to reimagine the web’s infrastructure in the AI age. One of the best-funded is Project Liberty, a $500mn initiative backed by the American businessman Frank McCourt. This has helped develop the interoperable decentralised social networking protocol (DSNP) that enables users to delegate and revoke access to their data for every application. Project Liberty is now working with more than 170 partner organisations, with the protocol being used by about 14mn people, according to McCourt. “Agency should be returned to individuals,” he tells me.
Hailing from a five-generation construction company family, McCourt is convinced that fixing underlying infrastructure is often the most effective means of tackling surface problems. The best way to solve lead poisoning in water, for example, is by replacing dangerous pipes, not the sink and tap. Systemic change happens from the bottom up, rather than the top down.
As he sees it, the technology is evolving from an app-centric web to an AI-enabled agentic web and that creates white space for change. While it is hard to disrupt 30 years of entrenched technology, it is easier to design new plumbing from scratch. Berners-Lee envisages the creation of a safe, secure and personalised AI agent that will work solely in the user’s interests. Inrupt is in the process of developing Charlie, as he calls it.
Some countries, most notably India, have shown how it is possible to build alternative public digital infrastructure. The India Stack, which includes the digital Aadhaar identity system and Unified Payments Interface, has created “public rails” on which private ingenuity can flourish.
Similarly, the EU’s planned introduction of digital identity wallets by the end of 2026 provides a “fantastic opportunity” for Europe to strengthen the principle of individual data rights, according to McCourt. The wallets will enable users to establish their digital ID and request, store and share documents with trusted parties. “Europe is in a very special place right now and can provide leadership for the world,” McCourt says.
The richer, dominant tech giants are still best placed to capture the emerging AI data economy, just as they developed ingenious ways to monetise the web. But alternative infrastructures are possible. In implementing its AI Act, the EU has been attempting to regulate the future. But by stimulating demand for user-first AI services, it can help build it.
This article has been amended to reflect that Project Liberty is no longer non-profit
