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Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

solid.inrupt.com

131–140 of 263 posts

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#131
post #93

Who's "Inrupt"? The main Solid site is https://solid.mit.edu/" . Inrupt is not in Crunchbase. They don't have a business address on their site. They try to get people to sign up without giving terms and conditions first. And they want you to give them access to all your personal information. Right.

A company of some respected people it seems: https://www.inrupt.com/meet-the-inrupters/

Theranos had an impressive collection of names, too.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#133
post #87

After reading what little documentation is available and installing a single-user solid server myself, I wonder if this is how people felt when the World Wide Web was first invented. I find myself asking: Okay, now what? Except I think even the World Wide Web, when it was first invented, at least had a demo that worked. Solid doesn't even seem to work. Following instructions for "learn[ing] how to install and run you…

Here's some more information about the app experience. I'm sure this is a very very early test to see how many people are interested.

I, for 1 and super excited to take back my data.

https://www.inrupt.com/our-work/

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#134
post #88
post #87

After reading what little documentation is available and installing a single-user solid server myself, I wonder if this is how people felt when the World Wide Web was first invented. I find myself asking: Okay, now what? Except I think even the World Wide Web, when it was first invented, at least had a demo that worked. Solid doesn't even seem to work. Following instructions for "learn[ing] how to install and run you…

AFAICT there are literally no apps to try this on. Why did they decide to announce this and publicize it before a basic, well-polished, example was ready? The pod signup process is using vanilla bootstrap, there wasn't even a visual design pass.

isn't there something about if you wait to launch until you have a basic well-polished example you launched too late?

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#135
post #68
post #8

applications :( Does anyone else feel nostalgia for the pre-"web app" days of the internet? I'm talking about personal sites on Geocities and web rings built on communities of shared interest. The browser was an application for navigating hyperlinked information. Other applications include email clients, news readers, FTP clients, and IRC clients. You never had to download a megabyte of minified JavaScript just to re…

I don't. For me to get a nostalgia rush I need to go down to the Computer History Museum and see yet older stuff. Nostalgia isn't a function of quality, but of age. Douglas Adams expressed this well: “I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything t…

Nostalgia isn't a function of quality, but of age.

It's not just age, it's a sense of loss. I can still go down to the store and buy milk in bag form, just as I could when I was a kid, so I don't feel nostalgic about it even though it's old. I feel nostalgic about the web of my youth because that place is gone now and it'll likely never come back.

In tech circles we like to obsess over new technologies and all of the amazing new possibilities they've brought. We don't spend nearly as much time talking about all we've lost.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#136
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT there are literally no apps to try this on. Why did they decide to announce this and publicize it before a basic, well-polished, example was ready? The pod signup process is using vanilla bootstrap, there wasn't even a visual design pass.

isn't there something about if you wait to launch until you have a basic well-polished example you launched too late?

no, the saying is that if you aren't embarrassed by your first version you've launched too late. it doesn't mean that if you launch something embarrassing you've launched on time.

a new, far reaching platform for internet data exchange launching without a basic proof of concept seems like a clear and obvious gap that should have been filled before launch.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#137
post #13

Maybe I am just naive, but this all seems terrible. There are paragraphs of ideology everywhere for every aspect of this and nothing boils down to any understandable description of what engineering mechanisms I can use or how it solves the problems laid out. I really want to like this, but if I spend 15 minutes clicking the guides, the “build a solid app on your lunch break” link, and going all over the site, and I s…

> Maybe I am just naive, but this all seems terrible. I do have most respect for TBH and I would consider everything he thinks and writes about, but this does not sound too good to me either. The idea of linked data and semantic web has been around for almost two decades now and I have yet to see an application, technique or site that amazes me. On the contrary, most of the things in this space I have seen are bloate…

Peter Norvig put it best, when he said: "The semantic web is the future of the web and always will be."

Norvig is a smart guy, and maybe he meant something different by that quote than the obvious reading, but at first blush that sounds silly. If he's saying "The semantic web "always will be" the future because it will never happen, then he's objectively wrong. The semantic web is here and has been for a long time.

The key thing to remember though, is that the semantic web is about machine readable data... semantic web technologies are not, by and large, something end users interact with, or even need to know about, themselves. They empower things for developers, but are mostly invisible to the average user.

Google, Yahoo and other major search engines have been extracting semantic data - in the form of RDFa, Microformats, etc., - and using that data for at least 10 years now.

OTOH, if Norvig mean that it will always be the future because it's always evolving, adapting, and growing, then, well, yeah... of course. And that's exactly where we are. Semantic Web tech just keeps getting better and more useful.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#139
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I am just naive, but this all seems terrible. I do have most respect for TBH and I would consider everything he thinks and writes about, but this does not sound too good to me either. The idea of linked data and semantic web has been around for almost two decades now and I have yet to see an application, technique or site that amazes me. On the contrary, most of the things in this space I have seen are bloate…

The failure of the semantic Web is that it's repetitively being built by and for technologists rather than to meet a real need of real end users. It's technologists in a vacuum building approaches that don't actually solve problems that millions of people have. So long as they keep doing that, it will perpetually fail. Freebase as a prominent example, was pointless for an average person. There was no reason for it to…

The failure of the semantic Web is that it's repetitively being built by and for technologists rather than to meet a real need of real end users.

The Semantic Web hasn't "failed" and it's not something that end users need to see, know about, or care about directly. It's those technologists that use Semantic Web tech and data to build applications for the end users.

Freebase as a prominent example, was pointless for an average person.

Likewise Github is pointless to an average person. Because the average person isn't who it's meant for.

Re: Solid – Reshape the web as we know it

#140
post #93

Who's "Inrupt"? The main Solid site is https://solid.mit.edu/" . Inrupt is not in Crunchbase. They don't have a business address on their site. They try to get people to sign up without giving terms and conditions first. And they want you to give them access to all your personal information. Right.

Fast Company wrote an article about Inrupt, published on September 29; see the link below. It has been in stealth mode and is only just launching publicly this week.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90243936/exclusive-tim-berners-l...

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