Stephen Downes

The work of designing the web continues apace (it will probably never stop) and now consists of some 30 separate working groups and a dozen interest groups. To discern future directions it's probably easiest to look at the pipeline of innovations (illustrated). Some of the big things coming up: distributed (self-sovereign) identity, secure web payments, and interledger protocols. These reflect a desire on the part of web designers to decentralize and distribute control somewhat - an internet dominated by entities such as Google and Facebook makes people nervous, especially if they have a proprietary grip on identity, payments and data.