Re: Reviewing the Solid protocol

po 27. 3. 2023 v 15:22 odesílatel Philip Sheldrake <philip@eulerpartners.com>
napsal:

> I believe a retro-documentation of the principles is a wonderful idea
> Melvin; essential in fact. I do hope however that your recall here is
> inaccurate or partial.
>
> If the core idea was decentralization without further rich description or
> framing of the social good, of its beneficence to use a term TBL has
> employed
> <https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2015/sessions/tech-we-trust>,
> and if decentralization is known merely to be a means not an ends (Schneider
> 2019 <https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2019.1589553>), then all variety
> of ends remain possible.
>

On "Beneficient Apps"

https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Beneficent.html

>
>
> Roll the dice.
>
> I would argue that the odds are in fact stacked against a beneficent
> outcome in such situations, and too likely in favour of its antonyms.
>
> As you note, it's assumed that a URI is wholly satisfactory to represent a
> Person. A Person is merely an addressable thing and not plural co-evolving
> processes for example. How do you know that? On what social and ethical
> basis do computer scientists make this assumption?
>
> It is, by my reading, wholly incompatible with the understanding of those
> who study the human condition, relationships, community, society,
> cooperation, human flourishing, etc. The only founding principles that
> could possibly extend to encompass this design thinking have their roots in
> bureaucracy; unsurprisingly perhaps given that bureaucracy was computer
> science’s first customer, but very much not a system or mode of thinking
> one would like to see guiding what its protagonists hope will be a
> ubiquitous digital architecture.
>
> You observe that you don’t really expect much to change in Solid. I would
> then hope and expect society to resist such schema as Solid at every turn
> until such doubts as expressed here are addressed appropriately. From my
> interactions with European bureaucrats, they don’t immediately offer up a
> non-bureaucratic lens in making sense of the digital landscape, per their
> modus operandi, but they are proving sufficiently cautious I’m delighted to
> say. I have hopes that we can avoid the worst effects in this neck of the
> woods at least.
>
> Here’s to what you refer to as “new lines of thought or innovation”!
>
> Philip.
>
>
>
> On 24 Mar 2023 at 14:21:38, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> pá 24. 3. 2023 v 10:49 odesílatel Philip Sheldrake <
>> philip@eulerpartners.com> napsal:
>>
>>> Thank you Melvin for your reply.
>>>
>>> Regarding your observation that my comments would be more appropriate at
>>> the brainstorming stage, I couldn’t agree more.
>>>
>>> I have followed the Solid project since 2009, and even had the privilege
>>> to chair a keynote by TBL partly on the matter at the Royal Society in
>>> 2011. But my research into sociology and ecology was only just starting at
>>> this juncture, and more broadly web science is of course a never-ending
>>> pursuit for all of us.
>>>
>>> So here we are. The dedication to interdisciplinarity that is the
>>> hallmark of web science is putting a stick in the spokes.
>>>
>>> Perhaps I can put it another way. I began my career designing assembly
>>> lines for diesel engines. In light of the action that we know we need to
>>> take today in terms of sustainable transport, I wouldn’t dismiss this
>>> understanding and continue producing diesel engines on the basis that we
>>> should have thought about it all at the brainstorming stage.
>>>
>>> The founding principles of a variety of sociotechnological innovations —
>>> particularly by my analysis those that embrace and work towards
>>> decentralized ubiquity — require significant revision, and this includes
>>> Solid as much as we might all wish otherwise.
>>>
>>
>> Solid was partially created in the read write web community group, and
>> there were a number of principles that guided its creation.  We've never
>> really written them down, but probably we should, since the same principles
>> could form a number of approaches and specs, with Solid being the first.
>>
>> However, a core idea was decentralization.  I agree that definitions
>> change over time, especially as "decentralized" became a popular marketing
>> term (often in reality depicting the opposite).  In Solid there was an
>> effort to make the system decentralized.  In particular there was a clean
>> separation between an HTTP document, and a Person, each being given
>> separate URIs.  This allows a degree of portability without being tied to a
>> domain, at least in theory.  Solid is one of the few systems on the web
>> that separates http documents and things, i.e. transport and data.
>>
>> Perhaps you'd like to review Solid with your own perspective on
>> decentralization.  However, as I say, I dont really expect much to change
>> in Solid since it seems to be becoming ossified.
>>
>> IMHO feedback is still good, as, it can be used to create new lines of
>> thought or innovation
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Philip.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 23 Mar 2023 at 19:04:32, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 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>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>