Re: Introducing Myself and PeerPoint

Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> On 17 July 2012 01:01, Poor Richard <poor.ricardo@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi RWW team,
>>
>> I'm Poor Richard, new to the group and W3C community. I'm a writer these
>> days with some old (but pretty varied) IT experience in a corporate LAN/WAN
>> distributed computing and web 1.0 environment. I used to design and code
>> some intranet, web, and database apps but I haven't fired up a code editor
>> or IDE in about a decade. All I can say I've retained is a general
>> familiarity with the development process and some internet and www
>> fundamentals. Now I'm retired and what I mainly do is write.
>>
>> Lately I've started working on something which is a bit of a stretch called"PeerPoint: An Open
>> P2P Requirements Definition and Design Specification Proposal."
>>
>> PeerPoint is an embryonic requirements definition. What is different about
>> it, as far as I can tell, is that it aims to encompass all of web 3.0 in
>> scope, starting at the topmost level of user requirements, predicated on
>> the urgent imperatives for greater social justice, sustainability, and an
>> open society. In short, PeerPoint aims to describe the full compilation of
>> applications we desperately need for a new economy and a new culture. The
>> big corporations like Google and Facebook are working towards greater
>> enclosure (more walled gardens), more user surveillance, more user
>> exploitation, etc. so the internet actually becomes more centralized and
>> less free by the month. The internet is not getting any 99% or OWS
>> friendlier. An internet platform for implementing a fair and sustainable
>> society must come from the indy FOSS community, and it must be designed to
>> be a free (or very low cost) turnkey commodity for masses of generic,
>> non-technical internet citizens.
>>
>> "Master plans" like PeerPoint are generally considered naive in FOSS land
>> because non-commercial development is self-motivated and anarchistic. Thus
>> few have taken on the job of planning beyond their own technical spheres of
>> interest. And nobody (as far as I can tell) in the FOSS world has been
>> assigned or taken it upon themselves to define and aggregate the user
>> requirements over all major application domains under one framework. Not
>> finding a coherent, universal mapping between the people's needs and
>> current technical capabilities, I appointed myself and anyone I can recruit
>> to do this.
>>
>> PeerPoint is not intended to replace existing requirements definitions or
>> specifications but rather to complement them. It is intended to be a
>> cross-reference between user needs and the most appropriate solution sets.
>> It is meant to connect dots and fill in gaps in the hope of more rapid
>> convergence and more comprehensive, seamless solutions. Because the
>> resource in shortest supply for Planet Earth is time, not programmers.
>>
>> I'm not lobying to make PeerPoint a RWW project, but everyone is warmly
>> invited to check it out and to collaborate if the spirit moves you.
>>
>> If you do open the PeerPoint doc, please let me know at what page you stop
>> reading.
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> PeerPoint:
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TkAUpUxdfKGr_5Qio2SlZcnBu_sgnZWdoVTZuD_Regs/edit?pli=1#
> 
> 
> So I managed to set aside time to read this, and am happy to say I got all
> the way through it (this time :)).
> 
> It's a fantastic read and captures the heart of so many of the projects and
> concepts we are working on in RWW.  I think the spirit is captured in the
> first paragraph:
> 
> “Sovereign Computing <http://www.advogato.org/article/808.html>”:
> 
> “To be the true owner of your information and of your computer's hardware
> resources, as well as to share these things in any way you want and only
> with whomever you want. To participate in the Internet free of the
> middleman, as an autonomous, independent and sovereign individual.”
> 
> 
> What I personally enjoyed about this, is the ambition of the vision, of
> using technology to benefit humanity.  I think a lot of that also comes
> through when you read "Weaving the Web".  Or watch some of the videos that
> timbl presents.  One I particularly like is from about 4 years ago from
> annaberg where Tim presents the web "roadmap" and talks about how the web
> could make a better society.  "Dont aim low", is the message:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_2YWiaPJ6A
> 
> At this point I think it may be an idea to step back and see where we are,
> and where we would like to go.
> 
> The Web is a Universal information space that, while still very young in
> it's evolution (perhaps <10% baked), already benefits for an enormous
> network effect.
> 
> Realistically, the Web is unlikely to have a serious challenger, at least
> for the next decade, and given the current growth rate, perhaps even
> thereafter.
> 
> Yet even still, the Web is not based on competition, the idea is
> collaboration.  The web (based on http) will assimilate useful projects
> based on other protocols, you just need to look at the success of Webmail
> to see this is clearly the case.
> 
> Given the large number of fantastic projects listed on PeerPoint I think
> there's a good vector to differentiate.  And that is in line with the
> "axioms of the web".
> 
> http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms.html
> 
> In particular, Axiom 0a, which is perhaps the fundamental axiom of the web:
> 
> *"Axiom 0a: Universality 2 Any resource of significance should be given a
> URI."
> *
> I would say most projects fall at this hurdle.
> 
> That's not to say that some of those projects will one day be compelling
> enough to be assimilated by the Web, but it seems unclear which to bet on,
> and which not to.  Simply put, use URIs to describe things, preferably use
> HTTP URIs and reuse Web Standards, which are designed to scale.
> 
> Therefore, there is a clear benefit in focusing on projects that are well
> aligned to the Web.  That is what we tend to primarily look for in this
> group.  The long term benefit will come from the network effect, as both
> The Web, and Linked Data grow.  It also gives a 'first mover' advantage,
> which we've seen to be important historically on The Web.
> 
> I think PeerPoint is an ambitious vision, and one that could be well
> aligned with the work we are doing in RWW.  It's something we can build,
> and I think the very best way of achieving this vision is to bootstrap the
> Web itself, by making it more Peer to Peer, by making it more Read / Write,
> and by reusing Web Standards that are designed for massive network
> ecosystems.
> 
> By following the axioms of the Web (in particular, universality and
> tolerance) we can align the technology to the ambitious vision of Weaving
> the Web ("Everything connected to Everything") and PeerPoint (sovereign
> computing), to continue, not just to produce a better technology, but also
> to create dividend to society, and human beings everywhere.

Very well said :) nothing to add, and I'm in full agreement +∞

Received on Friday, 20 July 2012 15:30:45 UTC