Peer-to-Peer Economy Proposal - Revision of A Distributed Economy - A blog involving Linked Data

Dear Semantic Web Interest Group,

Short Version:
Since my post on the public-lod mailing list announcing
http://adistributedeconomy.blogspot.com, I manged to organize my thinking
into a document that is about 20 pages long with over 100 references. A few
have shown interest who are associated with my alma mater, as well as
another outside. I have envisioned that in order to grow the most it might
be best to be involved with one of the major research groups with the
semantic web. But short of that, it may be appropriate to see if more
people with expertise in that area could look at it. With the way things
are going, I expect to have something ready within about a month.


Long Version:
I remember posting to the public-lod mailing list about a year ago about my
distributed economy blog (http://adistributedeconomy.blogspot.com). It
received more interest than I expected, and was unable to keep up with the
comments and to adequately answer everyone's questions. I chose largely to
retreat and study more myself to develop my ideas further. They seemed to
largely resemble ideas presented here, and may have been less original than
I thought. Tim Berners-Lee, in Weaving the Web, speaks about an economic
system enabled by the semantic web that may need to have some form of
control. I suspect others here are also familiar with such potential.

It turns out that I may have incorrectly named my blog. Maybe it should
have been named network economy or peer-to-peer economy. Distributed does
not seem to adequately reflect the network topology as peer-to-peer seems
to include an additional component, that of decentralization.

Since my post, I surprised myself and managed to organize my thinking into
a document that is about 20 pages long with over 100 references. My
graduate background in Chemical Engineering brings a different experience
and skill-set that helps me to appreciate the web in its birthplace in
Geneva, Switzerland. I am looking for opportunities where there is a good
chance that I will succeed in my efforts in hopes of making the world more
resilient and create a better environment for researchers and creative
people. I also know that the University where I did my studies at is
looking to grow, and recently there was a lot of enthusiasm for open access
and online learning. I'd like to see them adopt semantic web technologies
and participate in their development. I thus far have seen record of one or
two speakers who may have interacted with the University mention it. I have
seen interest in my project from those familiar with my institution as well
as another with deep domain knowledge of the semantic web, but I imagine
that it might be best to have others with semantic web knowledge look at
it. With the way things are going, I expect to have something ready within
about a month.

-Brent