The founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has created an ambitious open source project called “Solid” that aims to decentralize the internet and restore power to the people.

In a blog post on Medium Saturday, Berners-Lee (pictured) said the modern web has become “an engine of inequity and division,” with internet giants such as Amazon.com Inc., Google LLC and Facebook Inc. increasingly holding sway over it thanks to the massive amounts of data they possess on their users.

With his new project, he wants to restore the power and agency of individuals online and tip the balance away from “forces who use it for their own agendas.” “Today, I believe we’ve reached a critical tipping point, and that powerful change for the better is possible  —  and necessary,” Berners-Lee wrote.

To enable this change, Berners-Lee has created a startup called Inrupt Inc. that’s promoting the Solid framework as a way for individuals to control how they share their data on the web, and how that information is stored and used.

With Solid, netizens can create their own personal online data store, or POD, which will house everything from their personal details to contact lists to music libraries. Solid will essentially allow individuals to take back ownership their own data.

So, for example, instead of that data being stored in separate proprietary databases, such as Facebook or a healthcare provider, it will stay under the individuals’ control within their POD. That means the individual decides who gets to access the data.

“Solid changes the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value,” Berners-Lee wrote. “As we’ve all discovered, this hasn’t been in our best interests. Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance  –  by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way.”

Using Solid, individuals will be able to choose where their data is stored, which people can access specific elements of it, and which apps can use it.

“It allows you, your family and colleagues, to link and share data with anyone,” Berners-Lee explained. “It allows people to look at the same data with different apps at the same time.”

Solid could also herald new opportunities and experiences on the web that haven’t yet been envisioned, the Web founder said.

“Imagine if all your current apps talked to each other, collaborating and conceiving ways to enrich and streamline your personal life and business objectives?” he asked. “That’s the kind of innovation, intelligence and creativity Solid apps will generate.”

In an interview with Fast Company, Berners-Lee showed off the first application that relies on Solid’s decentralized technology. The app provides seamless access to all of his data, including his calendar, music library, videos, chats and research. He described it as a kind of “mashup” of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify and WhatsApp, the main difference being that all of the data remains under his control.

At present, however, Solid is still little more than a concept, and although individuals can sign up to create their own POD, there’s little else they can do with it, for now at least.

But if Solid might seem like a hopelessly ambitious and idealistic project, it has some serious backers, including John Bruce, former chief executive of Resilient Systems, a cybersecurity firm now owned by IBM Corp., who is now the chief executive of Inrupt.

“Solid as an open-source project had been facing the normal challenges: Vying for attention and lacking the necessary resources to realize its true potential,” Bruce said in a blog post. “The solution was to establish a company that could bring resources, process and appropriate skills to make the promise of Solid a reality.”

Berners-Lee transformed the world once. It would take a brave man to bet against his doing it again.

Image: Campus Party Brasil/Flickr