John Thornhill

Access to the internet is a basic human right, the United Nations declared in 2016. But, as the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted, it is a right that is still denied to billions of people at a time when connectivity has never been more important. For professional classes in rich countries with good internet access and the ability to work from home, the crisis has been made infinitely easier thanks to Zoom video calls and Amazon deliveries. It has been a far more precarious existence for those who have manual jobs and children at home with no internet access.

Inrupt, the start-up company founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to redesign the way the web works, is expanding its operational team and launching pilot projects in its quest to develop a “massively scalable, production-quality technology platform.” Berners-Lee said there had been a “rush of interest” from open source developers, entrepreneurs, tech company executives, and government officials to support Inrupt’s mission to decentralise the web and hand power back to users. But Inrupt now had to focus on the complexities of turning its underlying Solid technology into a scalable platform.