Tim Berners-Lee
Date: 2024-12-01, last change: $Date: 2024/02/16 13:03:00 $
Status: personal view only. Editing status: first draft.

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The Vision of a new World

This article envisions a transformative world enabled by the Solid protocol, a decentralized system for personal data storage and sharing. Drawing parallels to the early web’s potential, it explores the profound societal and technological changes Solid could bring by breaking down data silos and fostering interoperability across diverse applications and domains.

Solid’s core innovation lies in empowering individuals to control their data while enabling seamless connections between apps. From healthcare and education to finance, travel, and mental health, the integration of personal data promises tailored solutions, improved user experiences, and significant economic and social benefits. The Solid ecosystem fosters a new era of app development, democratizing access through “no-code” tools and encouraging the creation of self-governing communities.

By applying Metcalfe’s law to interconnected Solid Apps, the article highlights the extra value generated. It emphasizes the liberation from current internet constraints, such as siloed platforms and limited data portability, enabling more effective collaboration and problem-solving at both individual and community levels.

The article underscores the economic potential of Solid-driven innovations, not as an end goal but as a byproduct of enhanced productivity and creativity, collaboration and compassion. It envisions a future where empowered individuals and communities of all sizes work together to tackle global challenges, marking a paradigm shift in how we use technology to shape the world.

Introduction

I have written about the properties I want the web to have and the world to have, and I have written about the technical and social design which has been and is being rolled out to make it a reality. There has been a common problem in all this, though, that it is really hard for people to imagine what this new world will be like. I've been here before, as those of you following these notes since the beginning will know. It was really hard to explain to people what it would be like once the web had taken off, when there are only a few websites and I was persuading them to make the sixth. I could say "imagine a world with all the online documents linked together and instantly available on the net", but even then I could not imagine Google search, Wikipedia, Github, and XKCD. So I had to persuade a person to get involved with the web, even though neither of us could really imagine how exciting and powerful it would become.

Now, we are improving the web, to include the Linked Data "SoLiD" [Solid] world of read-write data pods, and to a large extent, it is now, again, hard to imagine what it will be like. People, users and developers, are used to the way web apps world today, the way the data is stored in "data silos" of Facebook, Google and Amazon, without the user getting the insights from their own data.

Developers can't imagine a world where they write a new web app, and people immediately start using it, storing the data on their own pods and their community's pods. They can't imagine a world where one universal data store stores all the different types of data in the world, without being reconfigured. But here goes -- let me now explain what that new world is like.

All of the domains

The Solid Protocol, a core part of the new world we are building, has novel properties. An app can store any type of data in a pod. In the current world, a calendar server can only store calendars, a chat (Bluesky or Threads) server can only store messages, and so on. Well, file servers like Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive and GDrive you can store different types of file, the server doesn't have a fast API for using those files as a back end store for an app. If two people are looking at the same thing in a Solid app, their devices will sync to the Solid pod in faction of a second. Dropbox takes minutes.

As I write this in 2024, the server (pod) software is pretty stable, and exists in multiple compatible versions, some open source, some commercial. However, no one is running a public pod platform equivalent to Dropbox for the public to store their data, except places like solidcommunity.net, which is for research and experimentation, not personal data. (The Flanders government is providing pods for their citizens, but they are only using it for a limited number of things. Note also DataPod [D1] and Use.ID [D2] are also providing pod services.) The Solid apps produced by the open source community are great [NdM] but many while full of functionality have "technical debt" in that they need maintenance and active support. The Solid Operating System [SOS] provides basic apps like Contacts and a Profile, and helps you manage your pod and other apps, but needs effort to make the user experience more appealing to wider audiences.

People say "pick a killer app and just roll that out" but everyone's idea of the killer app they want seems to be different. But in fact there are people working in many different domains, including healthcare, and empowering indigenous people and refugees, where the human benefits are potentially great.

Here is a list of domain areas ("verticals") from a Solid Project tracker: calendars, to-dos, app stores, contacts, blogs, podcast, chat, conference management, education, tuition, employment, taxes, finances, banking; fitness, gaming, benefits, government services, healthcare, legal, media creation and mixing, professional profiles, recipes, nutrition, refugee handling, retail, and, travel.

calendars, to-dos, app stores, contacts, blogs, podcast, chat, conference management, education, tuition, employment, taxes, finances, banking; fitness, gaming, benefits, government services,healthcare, legal, media creation and mixing, professional profiles, recipes, nutrition,refugee handling, retail, and travel.

You can do anything with anything

Its not just that all of the apps can store stuff on your pod, its now they can link to each other. Current pre-solid linkage is limited. Events have "invitees" which are people in your contacts. But from your contacts you can't find the events someone has been invited to. With Solid you can link all over the place. Use the people invite to an event as a group. Hold a poll on the group as to when they can meet again. Run a teleconference for the meeting. Make a new group out of those who turned up. Make a list of the actions from their meetings. Track which actions you have outstanding. Delegate one action to someone in in a completely different community. A Solid mantra has been "you can do anything with anything". You can comment on anything, vote on anything, make an action item out of anything, start a group about anything, bookmark anything, and so on. Because you have all the apps available at once looking As John says [JB], its a bit like imagining you could actually trust all the apps on your phone, and you trust them to let them all talk to each other". He had been planning a bit of travel, and noticed that he would tell, say the airline app which flight he wanted, so the airline app knew where he would be when -- but it didn't tell Google Maps where he needed to be at the airport.

The pains removed

At last in the new world you can share an album of photos on Flikr (say) with friends on Facebook, and also with your colleagues on LinkedIn. Either because Flickr, Facebook, and LinkedIn have all obeyed user and government pressure to be Solid-compatible, so the groups are interoperable Solid Groups, or because you have quietly moved onto platforms which are open and standard. They may have been forced to interoperate by legislation.

It is hard to imagine what it will feel like to have those constraints on you as a user of the internet removed. And you may adapt very quickly to the new freedoms.

The vision here is of a huge push for new interoperability. Healthcare is an important one: the right to move all your medical records onto your laptop and run apps and AI on them (or to give a trusted 3rd party access to your data to do this), and to share them with doctors and friends and family you trust. The large medical software providers do not come out shining with virtue historically, but user and government pressure, again is mounting. (I know as I write this of at least 4 groups working on code to get your medical data into your pod) [H1][H2][H3][H4].

The glorious new things

Apart from porting across existing apps and then adding new connections between them, also there will be new apps designed specifically in the new world; either because they just need the Solid architecture, or the Solid ecosystem, or because the zeitgeist of the moment is to create apps which address certain needs or ideas. Quite a lot of developers who meet up at meetups and hackathons have a desire to live in a world which is to a certain extent self-governing, in the sense of rules of interaction between people (and communities) are set up by the people and communities themselves, and otherwise mediated by machine. So there is a tendency to make apps which be mechanisms of democracy in some form. Of course many developers and many projects currently use online platforms where they configure a more or less self-governing organizations in Github, or its equivalents such as Gitlab or GitTea. There are things like Open Collective and CoBudget for sharing funds, and CCC's Fora, Polis, Decidim, and Loomio in the space of communal decision meeting, and so on. One can imagine new tools being created using Solid, as well as tools like those ported to Solid.

App design and creation directly by users will be furthered by the "No Code" movement, [NC] where an app is just driven by a data file, and designed by users dragging and dropping components in. "No code" apps are also easy for users to copy and then tweak to their own needs. A thousand flowers may bloom.

I asked an AI about places where there will be great gains form integrating personal data from different parts of someone's personal data in their pod. Here are the first 7 of 20.
Integration Data used Benefit
1. Healthcare and Personalized Medicine Medical records, fitness tracker data, dietary habits, and medication history. Enables more accurate diagnoses, personalized treatment plans, and proactive health management. For instance, combining fitness data with genetic information could guide lifestyle changes to prevent chronic diseases.
2. Education and Lifelong Learning Academic records, learning preferences, extracurricular achievements, and career aspirations. Tailored education pathways for individuals based on their strengths and career goals, enabling a seamless transition from school to work.
3. Finance and Budgeting Bank accounts, spending habits, investment portfolios, and income data. Personalized financial advice, better credit scoring, and smarter investment decisions, all while maintaining control over sensitive data.
4. Travel and Logistics Passport details, travel history, preferences for accommodations, and environmental impact considerations. Streamlined travel planning with personalized recommendations, carbon footprint tracking, and integration with digital identity for faster check-ins and security screenings.
5. Social and Community Engagement Social media interactions, volunteering records, and professional networks Curated suggestions for community activities, volunteering opportunities, or professional networking events aligned with personal interests and values.
6. Smart Cities and Home Automation Energy consumption, commuting patterns, and home device settings Automated energy savings, optimized commuting routes, and personalized smart home settings while ensuring privacy and reducing dependency on external data aggregators.
7. Mental Health and Wellbeing Journaling apps, therapy session notes, sleep patterns, and mood tracking. Holistic insights into mental health trends and triggers, leading to better coping strategies and preventative care.

Here is a diagram roughly showing the first three integrations in the table.

Personal Healthcare, Lifelong learning, and Budgeting are shown .

Metcalfe's law

Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, proposed a law that the value of a network goes up as the square of the number of nodes. The value to each person with a telephone is proportional to the number of other people they can call, so the total value goes as the square of the number of people with a phone. In the vision of the world where everyone does everything with Solid apps on Solid pods, the extra value is not just from the number of apps a person uses. The apps all connect with each other, in a network of apps -- and so the extra value from those connections goes as the square. Hence the difficulty in people seeing the point of getting Solid for just one app. By looking inside platforms that manage a large number of applications, we can get a glimpse of the possibilities that are available. If you have a Gmail account, you'll have probably noticed that when you get sent an email requesting a meeting at a given date and time, within a couple of clicks you can add that event to your Google Calendar, create a Google Meet link, and have that link emailed to all the participants. This is a simple example of how the integration of different applications can make our lives easier and more efficient. Now imagine that level of integration across all the applications you use -- not just within a siloed ecosystem, and you'll start to see the potential of Solid.

Communities in the Solid world

A big goal of the web has always been for people to work together, to collaborate. To work as a distributed team so that the insight of the whole is greater than the sum of the insights of its parts. If one person has a problem in their brain, and another has the solution in theirs, and they are on different parts of the planet, how do we get the solution to cross the brain-brain barrier? By getting them to participate in overlapping communities. As I write this text, there are things in my head from various communities: families, teams, the Solid Project, the SolidOS project, the W3C Working Group, the W3C -- and various commercial entities such as Inrupt inc., GraphMetrix, use.id, redpencil and iGrant. I often am listening to people in one community and want to flag it in another. That may in practice involve copying and pasting a message from WhatsApp and Slack or email. But in the world when Solid communities everywhere I want to be able to chose exactly which communities to flag something in or just which ones to search, very smoothly. ActivityPub applications are starting to make this a reality in the world of chat. Solid, with a superset of ActivityPub functionality, can do this for all types of data. Whether it is a post or a photo or a task, I want interface to look the same. So when designing Charlie, my AI coach, remember that it must have access to not only my personal data, but also all the data at home and at work in shared with me in communities. LLM providers are increasingly showing interest in accessing your personal data (be it on-device, in your GDrive, on Dropbox -- or really anywhere else) in particular, over the last few weeks:

Meanwhile OpenAI has been retaining user chat logs to provide more personalized conversations over time.

Economic point of view

From the point of view of economics, every time a person feels a pain point lifted, every time they are enabled, they are more productive. Every time a group works to solve a problem or create a new thing, there will typically be an economic benefit. The whole system will have a little uptick. The economic benefit is not the end goal. The end goals are personal and group empowerment, and though collaboration, creativity and compassion, solving climate change and the other global giga-goals. But economic benefit will be a useful metric. And every time that economic benefit clicks in, there will be a chance for commercial systems to help it all flow. So don't ask "what is the business model for Solid"? It's like asking "what is the business model for the web?". Just as with the DotCom boom - there will be more new business models than we can imagine. Because the Solid architecture will allow new forms of creativity, collaboration, and also commerce.

A pod provider is basically a personal cloud provider, so the business models of consumer-facing clouds like Apple iCloud, DropBox, Google GDrive, and so on. These are typically free at first, and "Freemium" model allows more serious users to subsidize the users who keep their usage low. People may also get their pod storage bundled when they get any online account like an email, a domain name, internet service, or when they join a club like the alumni club of a university. There can also be other models, where the storage an ID providing is done by a co-operative system of some kind, where users share the costs and have committees to do the management. So lots of models for how the pod storage gets paid for.

Conclusion

Given a title as huge as a vision for the world I want, it is clearly impossible to select all the aspects which are really most important or the examples which are going to work the best. One has to do what one can do. So with some humility on that score, there is my take.

That said, there is clearly a massive revolution taking place, and a huge amount of value being created. That value is primarily for individuals who are have obstacles of today;s world they may have taken for granted being removed, and new power to granted. But then immediately individuals use that power to make and work in communities oof all scales, from pairs through groups to nation-sized movements. From the point of view of the planet, that is where the work gets done. The fact there there is a fractal blend of community is the best situation for individuals solving problems, groups getting ideas they need from other groups a few clicks away in the social graph.


References

D1
DataPod
D2
use.id
H1
Indigenous Health Projects done by the Software Innovation Institute at the Australian National University
H2
SWAT4HCLS - Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Healthcare and Life Sciences, and the work that Janeiro Digital has with the NHS and Solid
H3
This GIDS PoC done by Headease
H4
Datasolids - who are facilitating the download of patient data into Solid Pods. They have been coming to SolidOS calls
DE
Decidim is a digital platform for citizen participation
JB
John Bruce, Inrupt Inc, talk at
HF
Hard Fork, NYTimes podcast, @@ episodes assuming that the AI world will be involve exploitation foo user data, and targeted advertising and sneaky product placement
LO
Loomio: The Occupy Inspired App for Consensus Decision Making
NdM
Noel de Martin's apps, MediaKraken and Umai, are fun, useful, and well-engineered.
OS
Yes, there are interesting architecture questions about how the operating system allows all this. SolidOS [SOS] has various registries in which a software handler can register to provide some interaction or view of a thing as a function of RDF type.
Solid
Solid the technology, the protocol, the project
SOS
The Solid Operating System is basic functionality any Pod owner should expect, like public profile, contacts and pod storage and access control management.

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Tim BL