The inventor of the web spoke at the IAB Tech Lab Summit yesterday. His message: the internet is entering its agentic era and if you don't build it right, you'll lose the attention economy entirely.
Build a world in which users have control of their own data, then build the AI that allows the language model to have access to that.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1989. Yesterday, he stood on a stage at the IAB Tech Lab Summit in New York and told the audience what he thinks comes next, and why it concerns him.
The conversation wasn't about AI capabilities. It was about architecture. Specifically, about who controls the data layer when AI agents start acting on behalf of users.
Berners-Lee's current project is called Solid. It's a protocol designed to let individuals store their personal data in what he calls a pod, a private data store they own and control. AI agents, under this model, would request access to that pod rather than scraping data from across the web.
The alternative, which is where things are currently heading, is a web where AI agents operate across data siloed inside platforms, with the platforms retaining control. That model concentrates power rather than distributing it.
Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, framed the stakes at the summit. The global digital advertising industry is worth $1 trillion. The agentic web, where AI agents research, recommend and transact on behalf of users, is coming regardless of whether publishers, brands or platforms are ready for it.
The scale of the global digital ad industry as described by IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur at the summit
Berners-Lee called for a Bill of Rights for the Agentic Web, a framework that embeds user consent and data portability into the next generation of internet architecture before commercial interests lock in a different default.
For marketers, the agentic web isn't abstract. If AI agents start making purchasing decisions on behalf of consumers, the question of which agents, trained on what data, with what preferences baked in, becomes the central marketing problem.
The attention economy doesn't disappear in this model. It transforms. Instead of competing for human attention, you're competing for position in an AI agent's decision framework.
Berners-Lee built the last version of this infrastructure. His argument is that the choices made in the next three to five years will determine whether the next version serves users or extracts from them.