Re: New Scientist - We want our internet back

On 08/02/2016 05:45 PM, Harry Halpin wrote:

>
> On 08/02/2016 10:51 PM, Kevin Marks wrote:
>> A friend showed me this week's New Scientist on Saturday, and this 
>> was the cover:
>>
>>
>> "We want our internet back - The grassroots fight to regain control 
>> and what it means for you"
>>
>> I assumed this would be based on the Decentralized Web Summit, and 
>> hoped it might mention indieweb and the Social Web Working Group's 
>> recent Drafts.
>>
>>     “Very big and powerful companies own a huge chunk of what happens
>>     on the web,” says Andrei Sambra, a developer with the World Wide
>>     Web (W3) Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
>>     the main standards organisation for the web. But we – the ones
>>     producing this valuable data – have lost control.
>>
>>     The time has come to push back. Sambra is part of a growing
>>     movement to wrest back control
>>
>>
>> then:
>>
>>     In a sense, that would be just getting back to the way the web
>>     was always intended. The original World Wide Web, invented by Tim
>>     Berners-Lee at the particle physics centre CERN near Geneva in
>>     1999, was a “decentralised” affair. There were no central
>>     servers; websites ran on individual machines in universities,
>>     offices and bedrooms. Hosting a site just meant plugging a
>>     computer into your internet connection and having it serve up the
>>     HTML code to anyone visiting. No one company ruled the roost.
>>
>>     Simple open protocols meant that anyone who knew what they were
>>     doing could be a part of the burgeoning network. “A lot of the
>>     things that made the early web wonderful were these open
>>     standards,” says Harry Halpin, also with W3C. “This allowed a
>>     level of decentralisation, and lack of monopoly control of the web.”
>>
>>     It sounds utopian, and in many ways it was – but far too fiddly
>>     for most people to faff about with. Those open protocols are
>>     still there. But we were lured away by convenience.
>>
>>
>> After more explanation of how silos are taking over, I was expecting 
>> a mention of the SWWG from the 2 w3c people quoted. But no.
>>
>>     Sambra is working on a project called Solid, which is led by none
>>     other than Berners-Lee himself. The idea behind this prototype
>>     software is to separate our data from the apps and servers that
>>     process it. With Solid, you get to decide where your data lives –
>>     on your phone, a server at work, or with a cloud provider, as it
>>     probably does now. You can even nominate friends to look after
>>     it. “We want to put the data in a place where the user controls
>>     it,” says Sambra.
>>
>> It talks more about Solid, and about Maidsafe, another interesting 
>> project, but not a standard. Then, Harry again:
>>
>>     The answer, says Halpin, is for the developers working on
>>     different parts of the distributed web to start talking to each
>>     other about their work, something that doesn’t currently happen.
>>     “The community has to get together with the adequate expertise
>>     and solve these hard problems and push open standards,” he says.
>>     Open standards will make it easier for talented developers to
>>     build applications without having to go through existing networks.
>>
>>
>> I thought we were talking to each other. We have multiple specs going 
>> through CR at the moment. How did this story not get told?
>>
>>
>>
> I did mention the Social Web WG but the reporter left that out. I'm 
> also disappointed that it wasn't mentioned. I discussed it at length 
> and was not aware somehow the W3C would be confused with Solid (a MIT 
> research project), much less Maidsafe (who do not even participate in 
> the WG). I'm happy to see the general concept and Solid mentioned of 
> course, as some media is better than no media!
>

Yeah, I haven't read the article -- as far as I know it's behind a 
paywall.  It sounds like it might help the mainstream scientists 
understand the need for decentralization.


> Note I interviewed the reporter when I was still a staff contact for 
> the Social Web WG before, I believe, being removed due to my funding 
> going against my will to Ira at ERCIM - and then not being supported 
> by MIT for not being sufficiently willing to push SoLID into what I 
> thought was premature standardization.

The first time I read this sentence, I misunderstood it.

I lean against having a public discussion of your own funding and 
position, so I'll skip those bits.

But I can clarify one thing: some MIT Crosscloud-funded personnel are in 
the Working Group representing Solid.   At different points in time, 
this has been Andrei, Sarven, and Dmitri.

Other MIT Crosscloud-funded personnel in the Working Group are not there 
on behalf of solid.   That's me and Amy.    It's hard to dictate 
someone's technical judgments, and since neither of us happened to be 
deep believers in the solid approach, it's been reasonable for us to 
take on the role of staff contact, a role which requires a degree of 
neutrality.   (W3C doesn't ask staff contacts to give up all opinions, 
because that's often at odds with having technical expertise.  But we 
have to balance the bigger picture.)

I've tried to be about 150% transparent about this, repeating it to the 
point of annoyance sometimes.   I'm sorry I seem to have never said it 
in a way that made sense to you, and I repeat it here in case others 
have missed it as well.

Some of you will recall a SWWG F2F meeting at MIT where I picked the 
name "solid" (from social linked data) so we could have a clear label 
for the stuff Andrei had just demo'd and was proposing to the WG, 
keeping it distinct from what I was doing (the broader Crosscloud effort).

> Although I still think its premature to standardize Solid, given that 
> the user base is relatively small and technology still under 
> development, although I hope any standards produced can be compatible 
> with RDF - AS2.0 clearly can and I believe AS 2.0 is being used by Solid.
>
> Although its odd to have Solid confused as a W3C standard although it 
> being Tim Berners-Lee's personal project, it's not surprising there is 
> confusion given that he is also Director and Solid is funding two 
> staff contacts for the WG (Andrei was also at least aware of the 
> Social Web WG, I hope he also mentioned it).

There are several minor inaccuracies there.   I doubt they matter to 
anyone, but just in case, I'll point out: (1) Solid is part of Tim's 
professional work as a member of the MIT CSAIL Faculty, not a personal 
project. (2) It's Crosscloud (a joint MIT-QCRI project) that's funding 
me and Amy serving as staff contacts; solid is a separate effort also 
funded (in part) by Crosscloud.   (3) I haven't heard anyone suggesting 
that SWWG standardize all of solid in a very long time, if ever.

> I'm much more unhappy with Maidsafe, as the security community 
> believes that the technology base is basically a possibly 
> well-intentioned scam. I've personally asked them to submit their work 
> to peer review as they make a large number of dubious 
> privacy/security/anonymity claims in their marketing. When I asked 
> them for peer review, I got a 'whitepaper' posted on reddit :) 
> Anyways, I also believe the software still doesn't run yet and is 
> patented.
>

Yeah, I keep wondering when the laws against deceiving investors are 
going to come into play against a cryptocurrency.

       - Sandro

>    cheers,
>        harry