In an interview with the Guardian, the inventor of the world wide web calls on websites to open up their data pipes and share what they know about us WITH us. Berners-Lee talks about all the sites and mobile apps he shares information with, and what could be possible if he, the owner of that information, could have access to it. He cites examples like keeping track of his running maps in and his daily food intake through apps and tells the Guardian:
One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don’t … 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.
He also cautioned users of about the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of the Internet saying, “web users needed to be more conscious that websites that seemed to be permanent fixtures of the online world could disappear within a few years.” So no matter how big Facebook is right now, make sure you know how to extract your data, and yourself, from the site.
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