Utopia to Dystopia in 29 short years
- History: Designing the WWW
- Defending the WWW
- The utopian promise blooms
- Dystopia emerges
- Re-decentralizing the Web
This talk
1969
1989
New: A hypertext link must be able to go anywhere on the planet
=>
Need a name for everything
a Universal Name
y1990
Layers
Universal Document Identifier
Uniform Resource Identifier
Uniform Resource Locator
http://w3.org/History.html#y1990
In any new system you design,
please make a mapping into URI scheme
so that we can link to your stuff
safe: ipfs: etc
"Give everything a Universal Document Identifier"
is a big ask
=>
can't ask for anything else.
Universality of the Web
independence of:
- Hardware platform
- Software platform - OS
- Application Software - Browser
- Network access - Mobile, Fixed
- Public, Group, or Personal scope
- Scribbled idea to polished publication
- Language and culture
- Disability
- Data for machines or Documents for people
- History: Designing the WWW
- Defending the WWW
- The utopian promise blooms
- Dystopia emerged
- Re-decentralizing the Web
Assumption of the 1990s:
We succeed in keeping an open web
and neutral net
=>
there emerges a cornucopia of constructive collaborative things
If you spend 98% of your life
using the web
You may have to spend 2% of your life defending it
Sometimes we had to protest
2015 India
2017 Washington DC
- History: Designing the WWW
- Defending the WWW
- The utopian promise blooms
- Dystopia emerged
- Re-decentralizing the Web
Semantic Web
schema.org embedded RDFa and microdata
on > 40% of web pages
2007
2009
2010
2014
2018
More than a third of all web pages have Schema.org microdata, RDF/a
Info boxes search engines understand things
Huge Linked Open Data cloud
Graph query languages taken off
Semantic Web
Virtuous Circle
Open Web philosophy (v1)
It doesn’t matter how much junk there is out there
because:
you don’t have to read it.
- History: Designing the WWW
- Defending the WWW
- The utopian promise blooms
- Dystopia emerges
- Re-decentralizing the Web
FAKE NEWS
- History: Designing the WWW
- Defending the WWW
- The utopian promise blooms
- Dystopia emerged
- Re-decentralizing the Web
Utopia to Dystopia …
and back again?
Think about engineering web-scale things
Web Science Circle
Web Science
Web Science
- 2006: Web Science Research Initiative
- 2009: W S Trust , WSTnet
- Journal
- 2009: Conferences
- Web Scientists
follow,
re-tweet
News system
Relative propagation
of emotions
News system
Public forum
Dissent platform
Nastiness
Fake news
Trolls
anonymity
Text
Vicious circle
Re-decentralizing the Web
Myth: Your data is hugely valuable “monetized”
Truth: you’re worth between $2 to $91 to them*
*source ZDNet May 2012
Myth: to get free stuff people are happy to give
up their privacy
Suggestion: People do care and will pay for apps, content, news and storage
Solid is about CHOICE
CHOOSE your data storage places
CHOOSE your apps separately
switch your data, upgrade your apps
your CHOICE
Solid: A Common storage API for all apps
Common protocols:
- HTTPS GET/PUT/PATCH
- One big unix file system
- RDF data model in files
- PATCH method: file as DB
- Pub/Sub with web sockets
- Auth: OpenID-Connect -> URI
- or: Client certs -> URI
Common data formats:
- Public Profile
- Personal Preferences
- Contacts, groups
- Access control lists
- Indexes of instances of Apps
- Preferred, trusted apps
Lots of (arbitrary) decisions
Build systems which lead people to be constructive
Understand how things work
across the disciplines and across
scale
2018
Thank you
From Utopia to Dystopia
...and back again?