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Berners-Lee Calls for Web Where PCs Do More Work

"Web of trust" to allow powerful software agents, predicts Web founder.

By Eric Bender, PCWorld   

Until now, "the job of Web software has been to hide the networks and the computers," noted Berners-Lee, speaking here on Wednesday at the eBusiness World conference. "In phase two, the computers come back as software agents."

"Agents haven't been a big part of our lives to date," Berners-Lee acknowledged, but he predicted that will change as the Web becomes "one big machine-readable database." As standards evolve for storing contextual information about each user and Web site resource, agents will be able to perform strikingly useful jobs, he forecast.

Among the tasks, you'll be able to find information without the usual nightmare of searching through thousands of hits, he said. Combining classic text search engines with new logical-search systems, you'll be able to "ask unqualified questions, like why is the sky blue?" on a global scale, and get back verifiable answers from known sources, Berners-Lee declared.

Down the road, agents should handle our tax forms, since all the data already exists on computers in organizations we deal with, he pointed out. "If computers can't do Form 1099, I don't think humans should be forced to fill it out."

Closer to home, browsers should help guard your privacy rights, he said. "Your browser could read the fine print for you  and warn you that these people are going to abuse you, by your [privacy] standards."

Trust Is a Must
Solving privacy and security issues are absolute requirements for establishing a "web of trust," Berners-Lee emphasized. "There are a lot of areas in which people are very nervous." Addressing these issues is a top priority for the World Wide Web Consortium, the standards-setting organization that Berners-Lee directs.

When privacy concerns are addressed properly, "e-commerce will become more powerful," he said. So will online collaboration, he predicted. Originally, "I thought the Web would be used mainly for collaborative projects," but that didn't happen, Berners-Lee added. "Why don't we use the Web as a place to share ideas? Because we're not absolutely sure we know who will read the documents." When you know you can trust the information you receive, he claimed, "people will be very much more willing to put stuff in. The quality of information should go up a lot."