The event, called the Decentralized Web Summit, is focused on "locking the web open."

The idea is that the Web could be a place where governments don't spy or censor information, where culture is preserved, and information is stored in a decentralized way.

"The Decentralized Web aims to make the Web open, secure and free of censorship by distributing data, processing, and hosting across millions of computers around the world, with no centralized control," the summit's website declares.

Among the speakers at the summit is Tim Berners-Lee, the 1989 creator of the World Wide Web. He spoke about its current shortcomings with The New York Times.

"It controls what people see, creates mechanisms for how people interact," Berners-Lee said. "It's been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people's content, taking you to the wrong websites — that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create."