Inrupt, a startup launched by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, has revealed an enterprise version of its Solid privacy platform.

Designed with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Solid allows users to create Personal Online Data Stores (Pods). Solid Pods enable users to grant third-party apps access to their data instead of allowing companies to store and manage their data for them.

“It’s going to drive groundbreaking new opportunities that not only restore trust in data but also enhance our lives,” said Berners-Lee.

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is a Solid early adopter. It allows patients to store personal medical data and information from smart-device-based health apps in Pods. Patients can then grant doctors, family members and at-home caregivers access to select data within the Pods. Caregivers, family members and patients can also add caretaking notes or observations that doctors can use to improve patient care.

Other Solid early adopters include the BBC, NatWest Bank and the Government of Flanders in Belgium.

John Bruce, Inrupt CEO, wrote in a blog post, “The NHS is empowering patients with their own medical data to improve people’s health and lower care costs. The BBC and NatWest are finding that a user-centered approach to trust and data opens doors to smarter service delivery. And the Flanders government is about to prove that Solid can transform an entire citizen experience.”

Berners-Lee has grown concerned with big tech exploiting its users and their data in the past few years.

In 2018, Berners-Lee wrote, “Today, I believe we’ve reached a critical tipping point, and that powerful change for the better is possible — and necessary.” He continued: “Solid changes the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value.”

The semantic web focuses on data rather than on documents, making it a much more immersive and detailed way of accessing information compared to the World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners Lee in the late 1980s.

However, Berners-Lee still played a very important role in its inception, developing the idea alongside AI researcher James Hendler and computer scientist Ora Lassila. The idea was first revealed in 2001 in a Scientific America article, where the threesome discussed the idea of connecting information using a network that could be read by machines.

What is the definition of the semantic web?

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the semantic web is "a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries".

The concept is to offer people the information they're looking for at the time they need it. One of its key philosophies is that although the information presented on the internet is useful, it's not always needed at every point.

Because the majority of data is created using forms and then converted into HTML, there's no way all data can be managed by everyone at all times. The semantic web makes this information more useful because it can be repurposed.

The semantic web essentially allows for the connection of information using a network that can be easily read by machines, whether traditional computers, IoT devices, mobile phones, or other devices commonly used to access information.

It's built on the premise that data within web pages is useful, but not in all circumstances. One of the biggest hurdles of the world wide web is that most data is created using forms, and there's no unified way of publishing data so that anyone can manage it. The way data is presented using HTML can be difficult to handle, and so the semantic web takes the idea that if this data can be re-purposed, it's more useful to everyone.

Schema.org has been formed by several organizations (notably Google, Bing, and Yahoo) to boost the extent of semantic metadata. The goal of this is to answer questions from the best sources on the web rather than serve up a search page full of document links.

The most important part of semantic web technologies is Resource Description Framework (RDF). This is a common framework for describing resources. It can represent metadata that can be parsed and processed by systems rather than just displayed to users.

Semantic web examples

The semantic web is beneficial for solving many of the problems associated with the World Wide Web.

For instance, you can more or less get rid of data silos. This is because the links between data and the wider world, or even localized sites, including inside companies, function without a hitch. The information can reside in one place by using semantic metadata tags that are also searchable to make it easier to sift through.

By situating the linked data in a location that can be used by the public, users will be able to pour through the data and information they possess to discover intricate relationships. This helps to make the data easier to analyze and significantly increases the value of the original data.

Media management is another application of the semantic web. A demonstration of this is when during the World Cup in 2010 the BBC harnessed the semantic web to run its player information database. Additionally, several of the corporation’s websites use semantic web technologies to ensure they can update swiftly and arrange the considerable amount of data it possesses.

The semantic web is also deployed in supply chains to help arrange the ever-changing data. This applies to data in different parts of the chain, including distributors, supply chain managers, vendors, manufacturers, and logistics firms.

Advantages of the semantic web

A huge advantage of the semantic web is the vast quantities of information, data, and knowledge it possesses, which can be translated to be understandable and ready for machines, including virtual assistants, agents, and AI bots.

It’s straightforward to mix different data sets through the RDF data structure, thanks to its simplicity and optional nature. Big data projects will see this as a useful advantage, where the different types of information within a business can sometimes be troublesome to analyze and organize.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has expressed concern about the way the internet is being used and how it can fulfill its "true potential" as a tool that can help everyone, not just those who want to farm data about the world's citizens.

In a Guardian exclusive, Berners-Lee highlighted three trends he thinks are having a detrimental effect on the web.

The first problem he has identified is companies taking personal data in return for very little that benefits the end user. Although people are happy to share their data in return for a freebie, that doesn't make it right for businesses to own the public's data and keep it out of sight in "proprietary silos".

"Through collaboration with or coercion of companies, governments are also increasingly watching our every move online and passing extreme laws that trample on our rights to privacy," Berners-Lee wrote. "In repressive regimes, it's easy to see the harm that can be caused bloggers can be arrested or killed, and political opponents can be monitored."

He said this may be an extreme example, but that even in more democratic countries, such as the UK, governments are increasingly monitoring citizens all the time and encroaching on human rights. It creates a "chilling" effect on free speech, he said, and means the web is no longer a place where people can safely explore important topics such as sensitive health issues, sexuality or religion.

Berners-Lee also referred to the dangers of misinformation or "fake news", which spreads rapidly across the Web because social networks and search engines have made it too easy to automate news distribution.

"Through the use of data science and armies of bots, those with bad intentions can game the system to spread misinformation for financial or political gain," he noted.

These tactics are being used for political advertising, he said, with politicians using data and the fact the public gets most of its news from just two sources social media and search engines to target political advertising campaigns at the vulnerable.

"One source suggests that in the 2016 US election, as many as 50,000 variations of adverts were being served every single day on Facebook, a near-impossible situation to monitor," Berners-Lee said.

The solution to this, Berners-Lee said, is to work with web companies to ensure people can control their own data, while fighting against data surveillance laws. It's also everyone's responsibility to push back against search engines and social networks to make sure they come up with ways to stop the spread of misinformation.

"We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed," he concluded.

"It has taken all of us to build the web we have, and now it is up to all of us to build the web we want for everyone."

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has called on people to defend net neutrality and keep the web a democratic, decentralised platform.

In a keynote speech to kick off this year's IP Expo in London, the World Wide Web creator gave his view on what the world would be like in 2050, but warned that these were "instructions, rather than predictions".

"I don't like to give predictions, the future is what we build."

He said the web he created was built on top of an open internet and that net neutralitiy must be kept in order to help future innovations take flight.

"We have to keep fighting for net neutrality and keeping the internet as a platform without a centre, a platform without an attitude," he said.

He warned againast ISPs creating a two-tier internet where certain websites and applications were slowed down and "held to ransom". He said that providers that did this should have "the public come down on them like a ton of bricks".

"Net neutrality is really important, it means you don't have to worry about someone on the internet throttling your latest app."

Sir Tim went on to talk about web privacy and said the idea that it is dead is "hopeless and sad". He urged people to build systems that allowed for privacy, before adding that his vision for the web is one where users can control their data and by extension their privacy.

"I would like to build a world where I have control of my data and maybe I sell it to you. More importantly, I'll have control of access and legal ownership of all the data about me."

He insisted that privacy is still important but in sharing data with third parties, people must realises it is a lot less valuable to firms than it is to people themselves.

"This data is more valuable to me than to companies building targeted ads," he said, before stating that sharing personal data should be used to create apps that improve the quality of life.

"If I'm in a car accident, I want any doctor to access that data to treat me," he said, adding he didn't want to same data to be used to sell him insurance.

Tim Berners-Lee claims our internet freedom in under threat by governments and corporations that don't have the public's interest at heart and has called for a bill of rights to be introduced to ensure users' privacy.

He said these organisations are tempted to abuse the open internet and this issue has come to light after former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked information suggesting the government was snooping on US citizens.

Berners-Lee said at the Web We Want festival: "If a company can control your access to the internet, if they can control which websites they go to, then they have tremendous control over your life.

"If a government can block you going to, for example, the opposition's political pages, then they can give you a blinkered view of reality to keep themselves in power."

Although he explained that certain activities such as "child pornography, fraud, telling someone how to rob a bank," were illegal before the internet existed and will always be against the law, the guidelines should state that no one is spied on and censorship should not exist where the internet is concerned.

He also referred to the European Union's 'right to be forgotten' ruling that allows individuals to request links to information about themselves be removed from search engines - essentially ensuring the public can self-censor information.

Google said it received 41,000 requests in the first four days of it allowing people to apply for the removal of links, although the search giant only approved requests if the links related to be "irrelevant, outdated, or otherwise inappropriate."

Inside the Enterprise: When Tim Berners-Lee put forward the first proposals for the worldwide web, or W3, 25 years ago, it was easy to dismiss the work as an esoteric research project.

The idea of using hypertext to link documents together was not even altogether new: Apple, for example, had an application, Hypercard, which it shipped on its -- at that time beige -- Macs. But the idea of putting hypertext links into documents, and putting those documents onto the internet, was new. Even Berners-Lee (now Sir Tim) could not have predicted how the web would turn out.

Since then, the web has cut through vast areas of modern life, and there is no way to turn back the clock. Indeed, such is the impact of the web that it's hard to envisage life without it. In many ways, it feels as if it has been around forever, not just two and a half decades.

For enterprises, though, the changes brought by the web, and the internet more broadly, have been resisted as often as they have been embraced. This raises some questions about the way businesses approach technology.

In the early 1990s, some, perhaps even most, IT directors resisted giving staff access to the web.

There was plenty of discussion about whether web browsing had any business use at all. Vendors produced software to restrict web access to so many hours or the day, or just to lunchtimes and breaks, so employees could go online in their "personal" time. Equally, companies restricted or blocked access to other internet-based applications, especially email.

Web access has become more liberalised, perhaps because of the way the web has been integrated into business applications and increasingly, the devices we use to do our work.

The more forward-thinking enterprise software companies were quick to realise that a web browser provided a convenient, and cost effective, front end for their applications.

This, in turn, provided the foundations for cloud-based applications, or software as a service, and freed application developers from their focus on the PC as the client hardware.

Instead, Berners-Lee's invention made the web browser the client. And the browser's flexibility has helped those applications make the journey to mobile devices, especially tablets but also smart TVs, games consoles and even inventions such as Google Glass. The potential to transform business further still is vast.

CIOs can be forgiven for failing to predict the web's future: even Sir Tim concedes that he never expected it to transform computing in the way it has. But the next time a left-field idea comes out of a research lab, remember: it could well be the future of business.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT Pro.

Even nostalgia isn't what it used to be. In days gone by, going dewy eyed over something important that happened even a decade or two before relied as much on people telling stories and recalling events.

Factual accuracy? Not necessarily a requirement, as a combination of anecdotes and history books ruled the world. They sort of still do. But now, a simple minute or two on Google now gives a selection of facts and a plethora of opinions within seconds. There's barely even time to pour a reflective drink.

But then that's how progress pans out. The world wide web is effectively 25 years old today (in that it's a quarter of a century since Sir Tim Berners-Lee pitched the idea of it), and you don't need another article on the internet to tell you just how much of an impact on day to day life it's had (in truth, for most people, the world wide web has only really been impacting their lives for six or seven years less than that anyway).

That's notwithstanding the fact that what's interesting instead is the thought of what would happen if the plug on the world wide web was pulled tomorrow, and what the ramifications of that would be.

In many, but not all, places on the planet, the world wide web's impact has been sizeable, sending many traditional businesses to the wall, and bringing in many new ones to dominate in their place. It's impossible to remove from modern day life. Indeed, it's almost unthinkable that life could carry on without it. It's like a dishwasher, but on a far wider scale.

The future may not be bright

Yet the large question that inevitably remains unanswered is the one that comes next: just where does the world wide web go from here? At what stage does its progress dissipate? And at what stage do the benefits of joining the world up to such a technology become overshadowed by the drawbacks?

So it's no surprise that the legal boundaries of the planet have been interrogated, and satisfactory answers have not followed as a consequence of that. As many have found, what's illegal in one country is accepted in another, and the decimation of global communication barriers, whilst not absolute (just look at Google's website in China for evidence of that), is nonetheless sizeable. Law enforcement isn't even in the vicinity of keeping up. It never stood a chance.

The challenge

As Professor Alan Woodward of Surrey University argues: "The challenge facing the next 25 years of the web is the whether the current internet can survive without agreed and adequate global governance. Such regulation would prove a Herculean task, fraught with challenges but such regulation does exist in other shared infrastructures".

He adds that "should we also consider digging a new set of foundations, for which there are candidates, or do we keep trying to underpin a technology that was developed at a time when cyber-crime was science fiction?"

There's no easy answer to that question, but then there never has been. That's, inevitably, why it remains unanswered.

The smart money suggests that it will remain so, although there's a strong argument that lack of formal regulations may yet be the best way forward for the world wide web.

At least that's a winnable battle: to come up with a global set of regulations and foundations for the web would require a seismic act of getting countries to agree with each other, when history dictates that international consensus on anything is a rarity. Individual countries legislating remains a clunky way forward, but how, realistically, will that ever change?

But where there's more sinister crime, and increasingly sophisticated criminals, law enforcement agencies have to garner cross border support to effectively police the web. In the UK, just getting cross-county support tends to be an effort.

The offline conundrum

But then to tackle any major issue facing the future of the world wide web requires a level of co-operation 'offline' that ironically is both the factor that slows web regulation down and speeds web progress up. There's simply nothing of note to stop it.

Conversely, when it comes to issues such as infrastructure, a further major test that will be revisited lots and lots over the next 25 years, co-operation is arguably essential. In that time, it should be noted, that many people who have grown up knowing the world wide web from a young age will move into positions of notable legislative power. But even then, there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

Still, it's somewhat refreshing in a way that for all the changes that the world wide web has brought about, human beings are still the best and worst thing about it.

The road ahead

So is it a doom and gloom future for the world wide web? Of course not, but it is a difficult one. There's little room left for staring at an evolving technology with wide-eyed wonder, hoping that its problems will resolve themselves. Furthermore, the excuses for being blindsided by technologies and the issues that they bring with them continue to wear thin.

Perhaps there's not another major evolution in communications technologies on the horizon, at least that many can foresee. But there will be a lot of growth, a lot of evolution, and many more challenges facing this one.

The world wide web's birthday is significant, certainly, but also just the opening chapter of a technology's story. The next chapter is likely to be just as interesting...

Earlier this year, Tim Berners-Lee revealed the UK had the world's most successful open data policy, allowing the public and businesses to access data held by the government.

Now, the Open Data Institute, headed by Sir Berners-Lee, is setting its sights on further improving the government's involvement in opening up data it thinks the public has a right to know about, using the information to offer accountability, enable businesses to produce new products and provide economic benefit.

Jeni Tennison, technical director at theODI.org, says the institute categorises the benefits of open data in three broad ways.

"Publishing open data is one way of being more transparent about what you are doing (whether you're government or another type of organisation). More transparency can help with being more accountable for your decisions, help engender trust, and (for government data) encourage democratic participation", Tennison explained.

Releasing public sector spending data, or data about supermarket supply chains, are examples of open data publication targeted on transparency and accountability.

Opening data up and being more transparent, ultimately creates opportunities for organisations to innovate and create new products and services.

"Because it is usually free, it lowers barriers for small companies who can start to provide novel offerings. It also lowers the costs for existing businesses that use data, enabling them to save money both directly by no longer paying for data and indirectly by being able to get hold of more data on which they can base their decisions," Tennison added.

This provides a general economic benefit, for example, the release of core transport information has led to a plethora of apps that help you know when your next bus is going to arrive or where there are delays in the London Underground.

"This can lead to a more effective use of resources and a more efficient public sector. The same applies to businesses: publishing data openly can help businesses operate better with their partners and customers, and save money," Tennison said.

Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at Quocirca, agrees that open data is certainly being used innovative ways in the UK, where it is so readily available.

"Opening the right data can be very useful. It can allow new sorts of applications that combine 'snippets' with other data to create a better view, for example, councils providing street furniture locations that might be added to mapping directions," he said.

The UK government has an Open by Default' policy which means that they are trying to publish as much data as open data as possible, listed on data.gov.uk.

Publishing open data is now built into government's service delivery standards for new IT systems.

The government is also looking at more effectively targeting the data it releases. Some data, such as spending data and data about organisational structures, is mandated for regular release. Every department has created an Open Data Strategy that lists the data that they aim to release.

The Open Data User Group and various sector-specific Transparency Panels include external experts and data users and try to help prioritise open data releases on data whose publication will bring the most benefits.

The government has also put together a list of datasets to form a National Information Infrastructure of datasets that they will aim to release as open data and whose open data publication will be improved over time.

However, Bamforth said, it needs good data models and consistency, otherwise the apps that exploit it go out of date too fast.

Tennison explained there are still three big challenges for government: producing a joined-up open data strategy, data as a revenue stream and it needs to get better using the data it produces rather than just passing it on.

"Government needs a joined-up open data strategy that considers the end-to-end process of publishing open data, from collecting the right data in the first place, analysing it to create useful statistics, through to publishing it in ways that are useful for everyone," Tennison commented.

The UK government still sells some data and it needs to move away from using data as a revenue stream if it's to fully realise the benefits of that data, according to the experts.

This means making some bold choices as well as working on operating models and procurement policies that ensure that it can publish sustainable open data, Tennison explained.

"The UK government also needs to get better at using the open data that it publishes itself. There's still a silo mentality where public sector organisations focus on data that they collect themselves rather than that gathered from elsewhere, including outside the public sector. The government also needs to invest in increasing the capability of civil servants not just in publishing open data but also in using data once it's published," she said.

However there are some very definite risks of opening up data for everyone to see.

Bamforth explained that opening too much data can reveal too much if combined with other information .

"An obvious example is combining holiday plans posted on Facebook wall, data about your car from DVLA and your address somewhere else online."

Someone nefarious might view such data as an opportunity to break into your house and steal your car while you're away on holiday. The combination of what seems like several bits of trivial low value data might suddenly open up valuable secrets, Bamforth warned.

Tennison agreed that using this information as a weapon is one of the risks of opening up such data.

"The usual risk that people think about when government introduces an open data policy is the misapplication of that policy to data that shouldn't be opened up (for example for security or privacy reasons)," she explained.

"But there's also the risk that government misunderstands what open data means and thinks that making information available for no cost is equivalent to publishing open data."

The problem with that is the (still closed) data cannot be used as flexibly as was intended, and therefore fails to have the promised impact. The ODI's Open Data Certificates are designed to help prevent organisations from falling into that trap.

Although open data is being used effectively in the UK and the benefits of opening up data far outweigh the risks, the responsibility is in the government's hands to ensure the UK's momentum continues, without putting its citizens at risk.

Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web, has hit out at spies who cracked encryption to monitor communications on the internet.

His comments, made in an interview with The Guardian, come ahead of a the first ever appearance of the heads of UK intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ together in front of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee at 2.00pm today.

Referring to the Prism internet monitoring scandal, Berners-Lee said the decision by spy agencies in the UK and US to crack open encrypted communications was both "appalling and foolish." He added that it was also counterproductive for their efforts to fight cyber crime and cyber warfare as it weakens online security.

"It's nave to imagine that if you introduce a weakness into a system you will be the only one to use it," Berners-Lee said, likening the behaviour of the agencies to those of a totalitarian state," he said.

"Any democratic country has to take the high road; it has to live by its principles. I'm very sympathetic to attempts to increase security against organised crime, but you have to distinguish yourself from the criminal."

He also slammed the oversight of surveillance by UK and US authorities as "dysfunctional and unaccountable," while commending the Guardian's reporting on the issue of Prism and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

GCHQ is descended from the UK Governmenr Code & Cypher School (GC&CS), which was founded during the First World War and whose employees, including Alan Turing, famously broke the German Enigma Code during the Second World War.

IT Pro will be reporting the news from the Intelligence and Security Committee hearing later today.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the world wide web and director of World Wide Web Foundation, has revealed the UK has the most advanced open data policy.

The pioneer has called upon world leaders to open up data to the public in the hope of fighting poverty, accelerating industry and innovation and reducing corruption.

Berners-Lee explained ahead of today's Open Government Partnership Summit that only one in 10 of the countries that promised to open up data has actually delivered it and the UK Government leads the pack.

"It is important that efforts to open up data and information are meaningful and lead to real change," Berners-Lee said.

"Governments and companies must not shy away from publishing contentious datasets if they contain information that could be used to dramatically improve people's lives," he continued.

Sir Tim revealed the Open Data Barometer report yesterday investigating into how many countries are allowing open data policies. It found the US, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark and Norway (as one entity) starred in the top five alongside the UK in poll position, out of the 77 countries surveyed.

More than half (55 per cent) of the countries included on the report have formal open data policies in place, but many of these governments will not release certain datasets, including company registers and land registers that could provide valuable information to the public.

"The open data movement has made a promising start, but many Open Government Data initiatives are presently resting on shallow foundations, at risk of falling backwards if political will or pressure from campaigners subsides," Berners-Lee said.

The UK Government has teamed up with the likes of Google and Facebook to help the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee promote internet access in the developing world.

The Government-backed Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) was founded by the web pioneer and will work with developing nations to remove bottlenecks in policies and regulations that prevent people from affording internet access.

The organisation's aim is to help reach the United Nations Broadband Commission's objective of entry-level broadband services priced at less than five per cent of average monthly income in developing countries.

Berners-Lee said the reason for the alliance was because the majority of the world's people are still not online.

He claims in Mozambique, using just one gigabyte of data can cost well over two months' wages for the average citizen. This, he said, had led to "a widening digital divide that slows progress in vital areas such as health, education and science".

"With the advent of affordable smartphones, new undersea cables and innovations in wireless spectrum usage, there is simply no good reason for the digital divide to continue," Berners-Lee said.

"The real bottleneck now is anti-competitive policies that keep prices unaffordable.

"The Alliance is about removing that barrier and helping as many as possible get online at reasonable cost," he added.

The Alliance said around 31 per cent of the population in developing markets are online, compared with 77 per cent in developed markets, according to research from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Justine Greening, secretary of state for International Development, said the Government was backing the organisation because it will bring enormous benefits to the world's poor.

"Internet access has been a driver of economic growth. It puts power in the hands of people and opens up societies. Yet for millions of people across the world high prices still put it out of reach," she said.

"This new alliance will challenge the anti-competitive regulations and policies that push up prices across the developing world, helping to bring universal internet access to the world's poorest people."

Google, the brains behind Project Loon - which aims to bring internet into hard-to-reach areas of the developing world - has also given the project its blessing.

"The world needs technical innovation and vision to bring more people online, but we also need a strong policy foundation that allows new ideas to flourish," said Jennifer Haroon, access principal at Google.

"By working alongside Alliance partners, we can help lay the groundwork needed to drive innovation and bring the power of the internet to more people."

Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist behind the World Wide Web, has described reports of the NSA's PRISM electronic spying system as "deeply concerning".

As reported by our sister title Cloud Pro, the programme allegedly gives US government National Security Agency (NSA) direct access to the servers of internet giants, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Skype and Apple. However, the exact details of how much access the agency has are currently in dispute.

The UK Government listening post GCHQ has also been implicated in the row, with Foreign Secretary William Hague due to give a statement to Parliament in response to allegations the organisation colluded with the NSA to gather information on British citizens collected through PRISM.

In a statement to the Financial Times, Berners-Lee said: "Unwarranted Government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society.

"Over the last two decades, the web has become an integral part of our lives. A trace of our use can reveal very intimate personal things. A store of this information about each person is a huge liability: Whom would you trust to decide when to access it, or even keep it secure?"

The Telegraph also reported Berners-Lee as painting a dystopian vision of the future that come about through programmes like PRISM.

"If you can control [the internet] ... or [intercept] communications, it's very, very powerful ... it's the sort of power that if you give it to a corrupt government, you give them the ability to stay in power forever," he warned.

Berners-Lee added that, while monopoly can slow innovation, this kind of Government intervention is a much greater threat than any one company having an online monopoly.

The internet is at the dawn of a new era of open data, according to Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

The inventor of the world wide web said open data and the semantic web would virtually link every physical device and piece of data online.

"The vision of a semantic web has taken a while to come into being because the web is so exciting in many other ways," said Berners-Lee, speaking at the Teradata conference in Dublin, Ireland.

The goal is having data available in such a way that it is more powerful, linkable and usable.

He said the future of the web is one where "data and devices everywhere will be interlinked and metadata is central to this."

Leading this revolution would be governments and organisations that open up datasets for people and businesses to make better choices and informed decisions, said Berners-Lee.

The quality of this data would be central to the success of this revolution, he added, and it would have to be made available to all.

To overcome this, there should be a five star system to denote the data's quality, he suggested.

"The first star is for data that is available to all, even when it is in the worst format. Everything is a fax or a scan or an image. Somebody has to untangle that and pipe it back in," he explained.

However, getting organisations to release data in an open format, that is readily accessible, easily queried and linked to other sources, would require a huge effort.

"Open data can change how government works. The goal is having data available in such a way that it is more powerful, linkable and usable," he added.

Inventor of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, claims internet users should demand personal data back from the likes of Facebook and Google to make the information work for users instead of the companies that collected from them.

Berners-Lee said that social networks, such as Facebook and Google+ are exploiting data that could be better employed by the users themselves, such as using it to improve their health and diet.

One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't.

The web inventor said in an interview with the Guardian: "My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I'm eating, of the places I'm at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I've been getting and how many stairs I've been walking up and so on."

He said Twitter and Facebook should be more open with data as this would be hugely beneficial to the users themselves. "One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't," he said.

"There are no programmes that I can run on my computer which allow me to use all the data in each of the social networking systems that I use plus all the data in my calendar plus in my running map site, plus the data in my little fitness gadget and so on to really provide an excellent support to me," Berners-Lee added.

Berners-Lee also lambasted government plans to snoop on internet users.

New legislation, expected in next month's Queens Speech, would allow GCHQ to access personal information "on demand" and this should be dropped.

"You get to know every detail, you get to know, in a way, more intimate details about their life than any person that they talk to because often people will confide in the internet as they find their way through medical websites or as an adolescent finds their way through a website about homosexuality, wondering what they are and whether they should talk to people about it," he said.

Twitter may be one of the fastest growing social networks on the internet, but it seems one of the fathers of web technology isn't a fan.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and regular tech commentator, has slammed the service at a conference in London, claiming it was "not a place for reasoned discussion."

The director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was speaking at the "New Web" conference at The Royal Society, expressing his views that all social networks should communicate with one another to open up debates to more voices.

However, when tweeters were discussing net neutrality an issue close to his heart Berners-Lee claimed "all the tweets were extreme."

"Is Twitter going to be a part of [the future web]? We need something a bit more sophisticated," he added.

"Twitter is not really designed for middle of the way discussion. Something should be."

Berners-Lee recently fought the case for net neutrality at a Government roundtable, telling communications minister Ed Vaizey the internet should not have priority traffic but neutral access for all.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned against using the recession as an excuse to close off Government data, calling it a "weak argument."

Speaking at the launch of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) UK and Ireland office in Oxford yesterday - attended by IT PRO - Berners-Lee showed concern around US proposals to stop publishing certain Government data sets as it takes up too much funding.

"I think there will be a lot of pressure in the US," he said. "What would be a shame is if people use the clamp on money to be lazy, not transparent and keep data, which they damn well should put out there."

Berners-Lee argued keeping the data in-house wouldn't even save the US Government any cash.

"Nowadays if you want to store something, it is just as easy to store it publicly and if you store it publicly then you don't have to worry about security," he added.

"It is actually more expensive [keeping it internally]. The argument that [they would be] saving money to keep it private is a weak one."

The founder of the web also claimed transparency was at its most important during a time of economic downturn.

"When you are cutting back, I think transparency in the cut backs is more important," he said. "It becomes less of a luxury to keep [data] back."

"I encourage members of the press [and public] to keep pushing for it."

Berners-Lee has long campaigned for open data from Government and played an instrumental role in the launch of the UK's data.gov.uk website, making thousands of data sets containing information gathered on the UK and its citizens publicly available.

He claimed the UK was more transparent with how it spent its money than the US though, and once those on the other side of the Atlantic got a taste of it, "the public [won't] let them retreat."

It's been a rather somber and sobering week in the IT PRO office as we've watched the natural disasters afflicting Japan become even more serious than we could ever have imagined, while Libya undergoes a very different type of catastrophe that's still nonetheless heart wrenching.

If you haven't already done so, we'd encourage you to make a charitable donation to the ongoing relief efforts in Japan.

Despite all the drama in the real world, there have still been a few japes and guffaws in the surreal and unreal world of IT to bring a smile to our faces.

The Neutral Zone

Net neutrality may be a political hot potato for our colonial cousins on the other side of the pond, but it's been an underreported and underappreciated issue over here, especially in the Westminster Village.

That may change though as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has spoken out against the idea that ISPs should be able to charge customers more for access to some sites rather than others.

The effect of such a provision could be chilling for aspiring British internet entrepreneurs, customer choice and free speech. That naturally means that IT PRO's favourite Tory boy, Communications Minister Ed Vaizey, has voiced his support for such an inequitable idea. We reckon Berners-Lee and Vaizey should settle the matter using fisticuffs. Geek vs lawyer-turned-politician! Our quatloos (that means money in Star Trek tongue) are on the Geek.

I'm having a broadband sleepover and you're not invited!

In spite all the fuss about net neutrality Virgin Media is pushing ahead with plans to roll out stonkingly fast 100Mbit/s broadband throughout the UK.

This would be good news except we've heard reports of 100Mbps customers supplied by various ISPs being subject to indignities such as less-than-stellar customer service and download restrictions and traffic management rules. Party poopers.

I still prefer Mosaic or Netscape Navigator to be honest

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9, the latest version of its imaginatively-named web browser.

Although it's the best version yet, it's kind of hard to take it seriously since it's not compatible with Windows XP and it seems like a mash-up of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, but not really different enough from either of them.

Personally, I can't use any browser unless it has an 8-bit mode that makes websites look like Teletext pages.

Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee argued the case for net neutrality during a Government-held roundtable yesterday.

Communications minister Ed Vaizey brought together industry and consumer groups, including the BBC and Facebook, to discuss the issue of an open internet.

"While transparency about traffic management policy is a good thing, best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," Berners-Lee said.

"The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, and another attendee at the meeting, claimed internet service providers (ISPs) were "not putting forward anything that looks like meaningful self-regulation."

"In contrast with the US, where rules are being put in place through the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), or Norway where ISPs have agreed a meaningful code, our ISPs are not offering us what we and the UK economy needs," Killock said.

"If that continues to be the case, then Ed Vaizey will find himself with the task of breaking the log jam."

Another attendee was Dominique Lazanski, from campaign group the Big Brother Watch, who told IT PRO little was achieved at the meeting.

"There is nothing new on the net neutrality front - or rather nothing earth shattering," Lazanski said.

"Basically, Ed Vaizey and Ofcom are going to take a cautious approach on it and see how the voluntary code of practice goes."

The issue could escalate when, on 25 May, the EU Directive is set to make transparency on traffic management an obligation.

Ofcom is also due to release guidance on how it will look out for transparency breaches, among other open internet issues, Lazanski noted.

Despite the apparent stalemate at the meeting, which also featured the likes of Yahoo, Skype and Ofcom, Vaizey described the roundtable as "productive."

Vaizey previously voiced a preference for a two-tier internet, saying ISPs should be allowed to manage their networks and charge content providers and users for faster access.

Yesterday, he praised the move by a number of ISPs to be more transparent with their traffic management.

Earlier this week, BT, Virgin Media and Sky were amongst a host of companies who signed up to a new code of practice, drafted by the Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG), to reveal how they restrict broadband speeds.

"It is good to see that industry has taken the lead on agreeing greater transparency for their traffic management policies," Vaizey said.

"I am pleased that someone with the expertise of Sir Tim has agreed to work with industry on expanding that agreement to cover managing and maintaining the open internet."

The communications minister said the agreement should ensure users could access all legal content, whilst no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry should exist.

Furthermore, traffic management policies should be clear and transparent, Vaizey added.

Following the meeting, BSG chief executive (CEO) Antony Walker said any decision on net neutrality should be "based on the realities of what is happening in the UK market, rather than what is happening elsewhere in the world."

"The challenge ahead is to build a common view on how we safeguard the benefits of the open internet whilst also ensuring ongoing investment and innovation," he added.

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has outlined a number of threats facing the future of the online world, with both Apple and Facebook objects of his concern.

Berners-Lee warned social networks "are walling off information posted by their users," as the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn keep user data to themselves without sharing it.

"The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service - but only within their sites," he explained in Scientific American.

"Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site. Each site is a silo, walled off from the others."

He explained this "isolation" was a result of each piece of information lacking a URI Berners-Lee's terms for URLs.

"Connections among data exist only within a site. So the more you enter, the more you become locked in. Your social-networking site becomes a central platform - a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it," he continued.

"A related danger is that one social-networking site - or one search engine or one browser - gets so big that it becomes a monopoly, which tends to limit innovation," he added, most likely referring to Facebook - by far the most dominant social network with over 500 million users.

Earlier this month, Google refused to allow Facebook to access Gmail data if the social networking firm did not open up its user data as well. Facebook has not complied thus far and subsequently offered a workaround to users for accessing their Gmail information over Zuckerberg's service.

Berners-Lee also turned his attention to open standards, suggesting companies which do not adhere to them will create "closed worlds." In this case, he cited Apple iTunes.

"Apple's iTunes system, for example, identifies songs and videos using URIs that are open. But instead of 'http:' the addresses begin with 'itunes:,' which is proprietary," he added.

"You can access an 'itunes:' link only using Apple's proprietary iTunes program. You can't make a link to any information in the iTunes world - a song or information about a band. You can't send that link to someone else to see. You are no longer on the web."

He claimed the iTunes world was "centralised and walled off," with no allowance to move across to other stores or participate in an "open marketplace."

"For all the store's wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up," Berners-Lee added.

Apple has been criticised in this respect before, notably by Adobe, which claimed earlier this year the Cupertino company wanted a "walled garden" around the web.

Berners-Lee also addressed the increasingly pertinent issue of net neutrality, emphasising the need for equality across the web.

"A neutral communications medium is the basis of a fair, competitive market economy, of democracy, and of science," he added.

"Debate has risen again in the past year about whether government legislation is needed to protect net neutrality. It is."

In the UK, the neutrality issue exploded into life last week when communications minister Ed Vaizey delivered a speech indicating the government could allow ISPs to charge for speedier delivery of sites.

He then sought to clarify his comments following the speech, telling the Daily Telegraph: "People are already entitled to choose the speed of their connection, but we're not saying one ISP should be able to prioritise one provider's content over another and I don't support the commercial decision to downgrade a rival's site."

Former prime minister Gordon Brown has started to put in place a strategy that will establish him as a major force for democracy on the internet.

He has agreed to join Tim Berners-Lee on the board of the World Wide Web Foundation where he will advise on ways to bring affordable internet connectivity to disadvantaged regions such as Africa.

He has also joined Queen Rania of Jordan's Global Campaign for Education as convenor of the panel on Education for All. With his wife, he has also established the Gordon and Sarah Brown Foundation to provide staff to manage the projects.

His new roles have been described as pro bono (voluntary) positions, according to a statement. "He will continue to write on global issues, as he has been doing recently with articles on the desperate plight of those in Pakistan and Niger," the release said.

"Gordon and Sarah have always made clear they are determined to continue to make their contribution to public life and these latest initiatives are a sign of Gordon's priorities for the future," it explained.

Brown's recruitment by the WWW Foundation follows the current government's axing of his outlined initiative to put 30 million into a proposed Institute of Web Science under Berners-Lee.

"I support the Web Foundation's mission to promote the advancement of the Web, as well as access to it, especially in Africa where the web can act as a catalyst for economic growth," Brown said.

The broadband situation in Africa is critical. Even South Africa, the most advanced nation on that continent, charges around 80 per month for connection through Telkom, its state-owned infrastructure.

In the Central African Republic it costs nearly 40 times the average monthly income, making it the most expensive place in the world to get a fixed broadband connection.

Many African countries lack fixed connections and rely on satellite communications to connect the dispersed population.

The Government may have cut funding for the Institute of Web Science yesterday, but its creators are determined to keep their open data project afloat.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his colleague Professor Nigel Shadbolt have made a joint statement expressing their disappointment at the death of funding for the institute at Southampton University and claimed the "future remains bright" for the project.

They are now focusing their attention of the survival of their open data venture a website publishing a huge variety of Government data to keep us in the know which they claim is a "crucial tool" during times when the public purse is strained.

In a joint statement, the two academics claimed the project was set for a boost.

"Linked data and the new technologies supporting it will, in the near future, enable better public services to be delivered for less, and promote new business opportunities," they said.

"The government is maintaining its commitment to the linked data it has already published [via the data.gov.uk portal] and to the very large amount which remains to be published."

The pair claimed the website will "grow significantly in the months to come" and that it has already begun encouraging Government's around the world to create something similar data.gov in the US for example but admitted it is still in its early days and "much more [was] yet to be done."

"As we enter a phase of cutting back on many things, the linked open data movement is a crucial tool, for government, public and industry to get the most value from the important resources being opened up," they concluded.

"During times of austerity, transparency is essential, and open data will play a crucial role."

This week saw the new Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws outline plans for spending cuts totaling 6.2 billion across the public sector, 95 million of which is to be targeted at IT.

In addition to the Institute for Web Science getting the chop, Becta the IT in education quango was another victim. A full breakdown of where the cuts are hitting has not been released from the Government as yet.

Alongside promises for superfast broadband, the Government today announced 30 million to create an Institute for Web Science, lead by web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee and professor Nigel Shadbolt.

The institute follows on the pair's previous work getting the Government to open up its data to the public, and will work with businesses, conduct research and advise the Government - especially when it comes to using procurement to encourage new technologies.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the project would build on the work already done by Berners-Lee and Shadbolt. "We are determined to go further in breaking down the walled garden of Government, using technology and information to provide greater transparency on the workings of Whitehall and give everyone more say over the services they receive."

Universities and businesses will be invited to take part in the institute, as well, and it will be based at Oxford and Southampton universities - the latter being where Berners-Lee and Shadbolt work in the UK.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee's call last year for "raw data now" has been partially answered as he launches a new government data site.

The data.gov.uk site looks to give the public more access to the government's data - a move the web inventor called for in a TED speech last year.

So far, the beta site holds 2,879 data sets, from the number of abandoned vehicles to stats about young people playing sports. The site also has a collection of 10 applications and mashups created by the public using the data, including a pothole reporting app, housing price maps and one dubbed "Where Can I Live" that shows how much time and money a commute will cost.

"It's such an untapped resource," Berners-Lee told the BBC. "Government data is something we have already spent the money on... and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody's office it is wasted."

Everyone needs someone to look up to, and IT professionals are no different. The sector has a wide range of truly amazing people genius geeks, brilliant business minds, ingenious inventors who are well worth a bit of hero worship.

Some may well look up to modern leaders such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer - we'd like to have the latter's public speaking skills, at least - or get historical and look back to the likes of Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing.

Here are IT PRO's top tech heroes - let us know yours at comments@itpro.co.uk.

Douglas Adams

One of the figures that had a great influence on me as a child was not a technologist in the purest sense, but the author Douglas Adams.

There's no doubt that Adams was a visionary and the link between great science fiction and science was evident in his writing.

Imagine a book that had information, much of it spurious, on pretty much everything. In 1977, Douglas called it the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' today, we call it Wikipedia.

A 1990 BBC2 TV documentary called Hyperland, written by Adams, introduced to me and the rest of the audience the concept of Hypertext'. It blew me away. Tim Berners-Lee was coming up with HTML at around that time.

Adams was famously a huge Mac advocate, and yes, he bought the first Macintosh sold in the country (allegedly Stephen Fry was the second).

He loved the purity and human touch of the Mac, and while he got to use and praise the first version of Mac OS X he sadly never got a chance to play with the iPod, a device he no doubt would have gone gaga for passing away in May 2001, just four months before it was introduced.

His influence in tech culture is writ large IBM named its 1988 chess computer Deep Thought' after the planet-sized computer that came up with 42' as the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is but one example.

Adams was always immensely quotable and it is with one to which we can all relate that I will end with "Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet." - Benny Har-Even

If you don't know who he is, well, you should after all, you're using his greatest creation.

The man invented the web. And then he gave it away for free. If there's any person who should be taught about in UK schools, it's this Brit.

After pitching his interesting idea to his bosses at CERN in Geneva, Berners-Lee didn't seek to make himself the richest man in the world with his clever idea. Instead, he humbly realised that others could come up with similar methods, and that making his widely available was the only way it would work.

So here we are. The guy could take his knighthood around the well-paying speaking circuit, pump out a few biographies extolling his own awesome-ness, or just sit at home knowing he'd accomplished more than most ever do.

Instead, he teaches, continues to research, and looks to take his creation further with his work at the World Wide Web Consortium.

On top of that, he's evangelising for free data. You see, the more good data that's made public, the more we can all analyse it to figure out how to make the world a better place. He actually lead TED attendees in a "RAW DATA NOW" chant.

He's intelligent, talented, humble and cares about the world. What more could you want from any person, let alone any geek? Nicole Kobie

I've been in contact with Black on and off since I started in tech journalism back in 1999. She first captured my attention as a woman trying to champion other females into a career in IT.

Since, then she's done no end of good work for individuals and groups alike in her work with the BCS and the University of Westminster.

Most recently, despite being an incredibly busy person and then some, Black has worked hard to highlight the plight of Bletchley Park. Without Black and others like her, this critical piece of computing's history, would be consigned to just that. She's keen to protect this wondrous place for future generations as so many technological advances occurred between its walls - if only walls could talk.

It would seem Black is also the epitome of multi-tasking, wearing all the hats she wears in addition to being mum to four children. And whenever I've seen her, either in person, or speaking at an event she always seems really jolly.

If I were a young girl at school today and attended a talk held by Black, I would find it very hard not to catch her infectious enthusiasm for what she does and why she loves tech. - Maggie Holland

At first, my choice was going to be Steve Jobs as the leader of Apple, but then I realised that what I really loved was not the company but rather the way the products were built and designed. And the man behind that aspect of Apple is London-born Jonathan Ive.

The way he has ushered in a sea-change when it comes to computer and device design is remarkable, and in the space of a few years has put Apple at the top of the tree when it comes to aesthetics and the all-important ease of use.

Ive doesn't get the big headlines like a Jobs or a Ballmer but he is crucial to how Apple is now viewed as the coolest company on the block.

The evidence? Well, think of the fact that he was the principal designer behind the iMac, PowerBook, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPod and iPhone.

The design and ease of use persuaded me to buy an iPod, MacBook and iPhone over the past few years, and I don't really consider myself a fanboy' as such, as I'm open to any company's products.

But it is Jonathan Ive and his design excellence that has played major part in convincing me to follow the cult of Apple'. - Asavin Wattanajantra

Martha Lane Fox was a massive dot com

success as the co-founder of Lastminute.com. The brand became a household name after its launch in 1998 and was one of the sites to survive the bubble bursting in 2000.

Admirable as this is, it is her exploits after her departure in 2003 from lastminute.com that really prove why she is a hero of ours.

In 2004, Lane Fox was severely injured in a car accident while on holiday in Morocco. This led to her spending two years in and out of hospital having multiple operations on her legs, pelvis and arms. She has had skin grafts and now several metal plates in her body but this hasn't deterred her passion for business and technology.

Her most recent move was to become the Champion for Digital Inclusion for the Government and is now using her technological expertise to help encourage more people to use modern day technology.

After her appointment, she released a statement saying: "Although I realise I am lucky enough to be one of the least digitally excluded people in the country, I have seen first-hand how technology can help to create positive change in people's lives."

Her journey has been an amazing rollercoaster and now she is giving her experience to those who need it. She is definitely a heroic character in the technology industry. - Jennifer Scott

Who's your tech hero? Let us know at comments@itpro.co.uk.

The web should be as free and unconstrained as a blank piece of paper, its creator has said.

Speaking at a BBC event to mark the 20th anniversary of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee said the internet should not be controlled, censored or intercepted by government or companies.

He asked the audience to consider someone looking up sensitive information - such as cancer symptoms or what it's like to come out as homosexual. If a government or company is monitoring every click, people won't feel comfortable using the web to find help with such matters, degrading the usefulness offered by the online world, he claimed.

"The internet should be like a white piece of paper," he said.

When you buy paper, "it does not come with the fundamental constraint on it that you can only write truth," he said, adding that you "can't get drawing paper where it's impossible to draw a nude figure."

Anonymous

That said, Berners-Lee doesn't think web users should always be anonymous. He said anonymity is important in some cases - such as when people were struggling against their government - but added that much of what was said online didn't require such protection. He said we need to "realise that the whistle blower syndrome is an emergency, it's an exception."

With that, he said web users must realise that everything they read online isn't necessarily true.

"Just because you can read everything out there, you shouldn't read everything out there," he said, adding that the future of newspapers could be online, helping us filter the mass of information floating around the web.

Mobile web

Looking to the future, Berners-Lee said mobile web use was growing - but it wasn't just for corporate travellers.

"What's exciting about this is not just that your executive who carries these things [smartphones] and jets around the place will be able to browse the web while waiting in a waiting room without a laptop," he said. "It is that in developing countries, of course, people have phones where they don't have computers."

As more and more people in developing countries get online via mobile devices, we must make sure content works for them as well, Berners-Lee added.

"Don't just target things in HD and three dimension and whatever the next thing is," he said.

"As the early adopter, we also have to make sure that we target things in low resolution, low bandwidth," he added, claiming other parts of the world will change the face of the web, creating the "web they need."

Get data online

Berners-Lee used the talk to continue his call to move government and academic data online.

He was recently picked by the government to do just that. "That's because some people in the British government got it, that putting data on the web is important," he said.

"Of course, there's a big pull from people who want to see that government data... it's not really the government's data, it's actually all our data."

The full talk can be viewed in the video below:

Click here for photos to mark the 20th anniversary of the creation of the web.

Laying out plans for government reform following the expenses scandal, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said all such data will go online within days and with the help of the web's creator.

Speaking in parliament today, Brown said: "All MPs' past and future expenses should and will be published on the internet in the next few days."

Exactly which government site would house such data was not made clear in Brown's speech.

Brown also pledged to open up more government data than just that related to expenses and pulled in the ultimate web expert for the job. "And so that Government information is accessible and useful for the widest possible group of people, I have asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee who led the creation of the World Wide Web, to help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in the web over the coming month," Brown said.

The promise echos previously announced plans from the Cabinet Office to put as much public data online as possible.

Berners Lee is an advocate of putting as much data as possible into the public domain. After speaking at the Webby Awards last night where he was awarded a lifetime achievement award he told the BBC: "The (internet] explodes when somebody has the creativity to look at a piece of data that's put there for one reason and realises they can connect it with something else."

He went on to suggest such collaboration could lead to the cure for diseases such as Alzheimer's or cancer, adding: "Giving people access to the data gives scientists huge amounts of power, it gives citizens huge amounts of power."

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has revealed he was the victim of an online scam, according to the Telegraph.

Berners-Lee, who recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of his proposal to create the web, purchased a Christmas present online. The present never arrived and he realised he had been scammed.

"The worst thing that has happened to me was when I tried to buy a Christmas present from a company that looked like a bona fide company on the internet and then actually they were a completely fake company. I think I am yet to get the money back, but it wasn't a lot."

"The moment I called the 0800 number listed on the website, there was a very polite message saying this number is available if you would like to use it, so a little bit of due diligence on my part would have revealed it wasn't what it was set up to be."

Berners-Lee said that steps need to be taken towards fighting this breed of online crime with just as much force as fighting other crimes.

He stressed the importance of the authorities working together to stop these, as well as the internet user being a proactive consumer and checking on companies before giving out any personal information. He also said that new steps need to be taken to protect users from harmful software on the internet.