About Us

Based at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Decentralized Information Group is led by Tim Berners-Lee and Lalana Kagal.

We are interested in investigating decentralized techniques and technologies that effect social change. We are exploring how to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in decentralized architectures that enable true data ownership with the Solid project; working on frameworks that ensure information can be shared, used, and manipulated in a way that is compliant with regulation, business rules, social norms, and user preferences; investigating methodologies to make algorithms trustworthy and accountable, as well as harnessing mobile technologies for disaster relief.

DIG's work is closely coordinated with the activities of the World Wide Web Consortium, the international standards-setting organization for the Web. We are also associated with the Internet Policy Research Initiative.

Some of our Projects

Solid: Solid (derived from "social linked data") is a proposed set of conventions and tools for building decentralized social applications based on Linked Data principles. The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy. [Paper, Presentation]	Punya: An application platform for building mobile Linked Data apps with specific functionality for disaster management. [Paper, Demo]
Tabulator Extension: A Firefox Extension that provides a human-readable interface for linked data. It is based on the Tabulator browser for Semantic Web information (RDF). [Paper, Presentation]	Semantic Clipboard: An enhancement to the Tabulator Extension that allows cutting and pasting of pictures that preserves policy information such as the copyright license. [Paper, Presentation, Screencast]