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Given Sir Tim Berners-Lee's oft-stated worries about internet privacy you'd have to wonder whether he'd do things differently if he had his time over again. David Irvine, CEO of "the oldest startup in the world", MaidSafe, is sure that he would.
"If you taught a computer engineering graduate all about IP networks and computers then said 'here are a bunch of cables and routers now go away and design a network where we can all store data and communicate securely', the very last thing they'd do is design a server," he said. "The only reason we did it that way because disk drives were invented before the internet."
Irvine and his colleagues have spent the last 10 years looking at ways to eliminate the weak link - the server - from the equation. "It should be about securing the data, not the server," he said.
"The only way you can really do that is to create some form of network where humans can't interfere, and where a piece of data is never stored on a single machine. By definition that has to be an autonomous network."
MaidSafe - Their aim is to make the internet a more secure place and to store data permanently on users' computers...