Re: Reviewing the Solid protocol

čt 23. 3. 2023 v 14:43 odesílatel Philip Sheldrake <philip@eulerpartners.com>
napsal:

> While slightly tangential to the tenor of the thread here, I would like to
> contribute a perspective in the hope that it might be useful in some way.
>
> I’m a techie first and foremost, but also a keen student of the social
> sciences for a decade in the true spirit of web science. I’m particularly
> fascinated by the paradigmatic clashes; or to put it another way, those who
> study the world conclude that it works quite differently to the way
> computer science assumes it does.
>
> I explore some key concepts below in this light. I write here primarily
> for brevity, offering a few links along the way. Should anyone wish to
> discuss any of this further, that would be my pleasure of course.
>
> *Decentralization*
> Decentralization is often confused as an ends rather than a means, more
> often by 'the other web3’ community in my experience. While I agree
> whole-heartedly that it’s one of “the truths revealed by nature’s living
> processes” (Schumacher, 1973), decentralizing can lead just as equally to
> poor social outcomes as good ones. Digital decentralization carries
> computer science’s premises further into community, making the validity of
> those premises all the more critical; existentially so.
>
> *Personal data*
> Personal data is defined in law in various jurisdictions. It is a legal
> concept. In 'the real world' we have interpersonal data, as ecologists and
> sociologists will attest in their own ways (by which data in this context
> is synonymous with information). In other words, computer science inherits
> the legal conception and does not embrace this truth revealed by nature’s
> living processes.
>
> *My data*
> “My” here denotes both “data about me” and ownership. The latter must not
> be tolerated. The propertisation of personal data is wholly unethical and
> must be resisted at every turn. Martin Tisné argues that the idea of data
> ownership is a category error with pernicious consequences, and the
> European Data Protection Supervisor disliked these consequences so
> intensely he likened a market for personal data to a market for live human
> organs. (I write more on this here
> <https://philipsheldrake.com/2019/01/the-misleading-name-metaphor-defiance-and-awesome-potential-of-personal-data-part-2-of-3/>
> .)
>
> *Control*
> Agency in co-evolving structure entails a negotiation in and with the
> world that the word ‘control’ denies. Attempting to scale control is a
> false god. (Woody Hartzog <https://youtu.be/39EqTvpa1SY?t=345> talks well
> to this imho.)
>
> *Privacy by design*
> The unprecedented scale of application envisaged here demands we take
> another look at the decades-old privacy by design (PbD) principles. A
> system designed according to the PbD data minimisation principle cannot
> take in any other information, and so cannot communicate context (the
> information ‘around’ the information), and so in turn may well frustrate
> any striving for justice for justice is necessarily contextual.
>
> *Identity*
> Computer science inherits the bureaucracy’s conception of identity. Mere
> centuries old in current continuous form, I categorise the bureaucratic and
> so computer science conceptualisation of identity as noun-like (after
> Bauman, Z. 2011; Fuller, B. et al. 1970). The conceptualisations of every
> other discipline with an interest in the matter may be categorised as
> verb-like, which alone should be seen as a red flag. Examples of the latter
> include considering information exchange, relationships, and identity to be
> reciprocally defining and co-evolving, and considering identity as the
> capacity for and the process of sense-making.
>
> Computer science is dedicated to making *things* legible to the system
> rather than helping humans relate to each other. Autopoiesis and cognition
> are rarely discussed by the identity digerati.
>
> Encoding only the noun-like leads inevitably to a pollution of the
> information ecology of human nature and human culture. For the avoidance of
> any confusion, pollution is contextual; a thing or process may be both
> highly prized and a pollutant simultaneously subject to contexts, and the
> art then is to constrain its application accordingly. Constraint is too
> rarely mentioned let alone operationalised, and it seems no-one is 'coding
> for the verb-like’ so to speak. (See Human identity: the number one
> challenge in computer science
> <https://generative-identity.org/human-identity-the-number-one-challenge-in-computer-science/>
> .)
>
> Kind regards, Philip.
>

Hi Philip

Solid has been a work in progress for 15 years, or you could argue a bit
before with FOAF, for 20 years.  Your comments seem to be more at the
brainstorming stage

An update:  I was pointed to the proposed DRAFT solid working group charter
(draft emphasis mine, as I think it's still early)

https://solid.github.io/solid-wg-charter/charter/

From what I can see most of the deliverables are more or less nailed down.
There's some room at the edges for changes, but not alot for drastic
rewrites.

Exit criteria being 2+ implementations and a test suite, which I think
Solid already has.  So I expect it to ossify what's already there.

Seems a fairly straightword shift from a v0.10.0 spec to a v1.0.0 spec with
wider W3C review.  Probably not a lot of substantive change.

>
>
> ___
>
> Philip Sheldrake
> eulerpartners.com
>
>
>
>
> On 20 Mar 2023 at 18:44:01, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> st 15. 3. 2023 v 4:32 odesílatel Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com>
>> napsal:
>>
>>> It is in scope for TAG, the W3C and whatever. But the idea your version
>>> is the one. If you want to keep the W3C relatively independent, that
>>> doesn't work. If Microsoft and Apple have to drop their version of scripts,
>>> so should you.
>>>
>>
>> It's still about bringing the web to its full potential.  Solid is a
>> pretty good effort in that direction IMHO
>>
>> What does it do?
>>
>> - Adds a social element (started with FOAF)
>> - Adds authentication
>> - Adds persistent storage, towards a read write web
>> - Adds human and machine readable data
>> - Adds realtime updates
>> - Friendly to humans and agents
>>
>> What are the limitations:
>>
>> - Still a bit buggy
>> - Some UX issues
>> - Largely (but not soley) based on turtle, which is a small part of the
>> web
>> - Not 100% backwards compatible e.g. requires conneg and few on the web
>> do that
>> - Steep learning curve for new developers
>> - Lacks plain old JSON interop (personal observation)
>>
>> Not the only way of doing things, but definitely something interesting /
>> creative / innovative.  It also lends itself well to interoperability,
>> together with future and past innovations.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, 24 Jul 2022 at 15:18, Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Solid is a growing protocol/movement, and the tech parts of it — the
>>>> Solid Project — are basically a W3C Community group.
>>>>
>>>> Solid adds things which the web needed but hadn’t yet standardized,
>>>> including global single sign-in, standard access control, and a fast API
>>>> for data read-write between an app and a store (a Solid Pod).  By making
>>>> the API to the store universal, it means you don’t have to change the store
>>>> when you make a new app, which completely changes the architecture and
>>>> markets and business models which are possible. It also leaves individuals
>>>> empowered rather than exploited.
>>>>
>>>> Would it be reasonable for the TAG to review the architecture at a high
>>>> level, or review the protocol?  It would be useful to get a knowledge of
>>>> the Solid stack in neighboring parts of the technology.
>>>>
>>>> (A separate future question are the client-client interop specs which
>>>> are needed for interop between apps, such as contacts, chat, etc.)
>>>>
>>>> See https://solidproject.org/. https://solidproject.org/TR is where
>>>> the specs end up after their github-based proces.
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes
>>>>
>>>> Tim BL
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ----
>>>
>>> https://hyperdata.it <http://hyperdata.it/danja>
>>>
>>>