Let's change the internet

We refer to the inventor of something as the "father" of it when we know for a fact that the person is behind the invention. Being a father of a "thing" is getting exceedingly harder as the "things" that are being invented are getting even more complicated. For example, the most important invention of the last century, the internet, has many fathers and mothers.  Pioneers like Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Elizabeth Feinler, Leonard Klienrock and Tim Berners-Lee have done awesome things and all their efforts brought us the wonder of the century. Among these giants Tim Berners-Lee deserves a special place, as he proposed and built the World Wide Web. 

He recently wrote an article for the World Economic Forum as the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and it made me think really hard on what kind of a future we are creating for ourselves. 

He says that there are three dark trends that could destroy the web as we know it. His number one is that we've lost control of our personal data. The current business model for many websites offers free content in exchange for personal data. Many of us agree to this - albeit often by accepting long and confusing terms and conditions documents - but fundamentally we do not mind some information being collected in exchange for free services. But, we're missing a trick. As our data is then held in proprietary silos, out of sight to us, we lose out on the benefits we could realize if we had direct control over this data, and chose when and with whom to share it. What's more is that we often do not have any way of feeding back to companies what data we'd rather not share - especially with third parties. 

The second trend that he underlines is that it's too easy for misinformation to spread on the web. Today, most...