Re: New Scientist - We want our internet back

On 08/03/2016 03:03 PM, Kevin Marks wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 11:46 AM, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org 
> <mailto:sandro@w3.org>> wrote:
>
>     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.
>
>
> It is, though you may have access via MIT library. The irony is 
> amusing. I have a PDF I could share for research purposes.
>
>
>     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.
>
> The frustrating part about the article is that it mentions w3c 
> multiple times, yet only discusses non-w3c projects. I understand that 
> institutional affiliations can be confusing, and people will talk 
> about their own work.
>

A related problem is that if someone wanted to follow up on the article, 
to get involved somehow, the results of a web search would likely be 
baffling.   Perhaps there are some prominent w3.org pages we could 
create or edit to help with that.   I'm open to suggestions.

         -- Sandro