Re: call to arms

On 30 March 2010 09:39,  <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:

> Distributed social networks is the story. Owning your information. Being in charge ofyour life. Removing big brother from your life. We don't have to live in 1984!

It may be the story in some cultures, but some cultures are more
worried about how their associates share their information than
whether the government has access to it by law anyway. Centralised
social networking sites allow users to delegate access to their
information, even if the government can in the end get access to the
information when it needs to.

The ability for videos and pictures etc., to go viral on the internet
without any recourse at al, ever, by the people in the videos and
pictures due to the complex legal situation regarding the web and
access to the information is only helped by a distributed social
network that is based completely on computer understandable protocols.

I think the Semantic Web needs to focus on something other than
personal information as the killer application, because people simply
won't go for distributing their personal information to anyone
anywhere without prior authentication and future revocation that is
provided by a centralised authority. From what I can tell, FOAF+SSL
provides the personal information in a nice computer understandable
form, and one can never figure out which person leaked this
information(??) once a reference to it goes viral for purposes they do
not agree with.

BTW, distributed FOAF networks enable 1984 like never before!
Previously government intelligence departments had to manually piece
together networks, with FOAF/Semantic Web you are doing that part for
them, and they just focus on data cleaning to know everything about
what you have ever done. They will be overjoyed if people actually
agree to it.

Cheers,

Peter

Received on Tuesday, 30 March 2010 00:06:57 UTC