Taking Back Your Data: Why the Next Web MUST Protect Digital Freedom

What if your data worked for you and not the platforms controlling it?

Today on Digital Disruption, we’re joined by John Bruce, CEO and Co-Founder of Inrupt.

With a background as both a founder and an executive at global tech firms, John Bruce is uniquely qualified to help engineer the next phase of the web alongside his co-founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He brings to bear decades of successful business leadership and experience creating new markets around innovative software. Prior to partnering with Tim, he was the co-founder and CEO of Resilient, now an IBM company, that developed a new approach to cybersecurity. Through Resilient and four other successful startups, John has experienced first-hand the strategic challenges that the current structure of the web causes for users, developers, and organizations around the world.

John Bruce sits down with Geoff Nielson to talk about a future where individuals and not platforms own their data. John shares how AI, consent-driven data sharing, and a decentralized digital wallet called, Charlie could fundamentally reshape how we interact with technology, institutions, and each other. He explains why we must reclaim personal data from tech giants and what “agentic wallets” are and how they work.

In this video:

0:00 Intro

1:25 Rebuilding the Web

3:30 From Tim Berners-Lee to today

5:10 Data ownership vs. data surveillance

7:00 Moving from platforms to people

9:15 What Is an Agentic AI wallet?

11:00 Why consent must be baked into AI and data flows

13:45 Use cases in healthcare, government & enterprise

16:10 “Decentralized” doesn’t mean disorganized

18:30 What leaders get wrong about data control

20:45 Enterprise integration

23:00 The ROI of giving users control of their own data

25:30 Why this moment feels like the early days of the web

27:00 What’s next for Inrupt, Solid, and the Internet itself

29:00 How We rebuild digital trust

31:00 Inrupt's vision beyond 2030

34:00 Partnering with institutions to scale Solid

37:00 Global digital identity and governance challenges

40:00 Building public trust in data ecosystems

43:00 A non-linear view of it all

Connect with John:

Website: https://www.inrupt.com/about

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwbruce/

Visit our website: https://www.infotech.com/

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfoTechRG