Re: New Scientist - We want our internet back

On 3 August 2016 at 20:46, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:

> 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.
>

I would caution against using the term 'scam' with regard to maidsafe.  I
havent seen any evidence that it is a scam, and it is also actively traded
in the region of $1mm per day.  Such casual speculative comments could
inadvertently lead to individuals incurring losses which is probably not
something that is desirably on this list.

However, if there are technical issues with it, or better yet, ways to
achieve the same use case (which is something ive been interested in for a
while) using web technology, that would be very interesting to hear about.

This, or something, is something that could fit in really well with Solid
as a decentralized data store with payments going to those that provide
storage and bandwidth.  Given the Solid ACL system, I think it's something
that could possibly coded using the Solid stack today.  Basically, you want
to access some storage, then you are given a 4xx code.  After that you are
prompted to make a payment, if so, you'll gain access to that store via an
ACL.

Maidsafe does have a github repo at :
https://github.com/maidsafe-archive/MaidSafe

There is also evidence of running code :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzkhA_PBys0


>
>       - Sandro
>
>    cheers,
>        harry
>
>
>