How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
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Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#2Can anyone name one for-profit company that wants to build software on Solid?
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#3Can anyone name one for-profit company that wants to build software on Solid?
The concept excites me. I want companies to sell software for a dollar value. That's what solid leaves open as the one remaining business model. You can't use my data so you're just selling an app for five bucks or whatever.
With the runaway success of microtransactions, I doubt this interests many. You can even see it in gaming. Spend $100 on Assassin's Creed and it still wants you to cough up $10 for exp boosts.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#4Given the tendency for wealth and power to concentrate, is it possible to design a competitive, and efficient system where all the actors are sufficiently prosperous without the formation of any monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies?
Edit: a follow-up thought. If the answer is no or "it's too hard", then is it possible have something along the same lines, is it possible for the proposed system to self-correct away from monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies should they form?
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#5Can anyone name one for-profit company that wants to build software on Solid?
I don't think that's a great mark of success early on.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#6Can anyone name one for-profit company that wants to build software on Solid?
Why does it have to be a for-profit company?
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#7Isn't this plan the same as the last plan (the name of which I can't even remember - app something. There was a kickstarter), just with Tim Berners-Lee's name attached to it?
My main concern is that this project is DOA for the same reason that the last few have been - too much of an academic focus tending towards navel-gazing, not enough network effect to draw hobbyists, and zero money to attract businesses.
The PDS needs to be a personal cpanel. Something with powertools for the enthusiast but enough shiny for the tech hipsters to use it even if they don't know why. It needs to be designed with an Apple-like mindset from end to end, and willing to make fundamental and architectural compromises (or sacrifices) for user aesthetic.
That probably wont happen.
If the effort around this was instead used to make something like Mastodon better, we might see much more widespread adoption of that platform. You could probably find non-profit funding for sufficient centralized infrastructure to kickstart a healthy mesh network.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#8Can anyone name one for-profit company that wants to build software on Solid?
It's not like the early Internet was a haven of for profit companies in the early days.
Early on most of the profit was in providing the access, not the content.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#9Obligatory cynical comment: It won't work. For the simple reason that if it is successful commerce will find a way in. A large enough group of people will always be marketed to in one way or another. And once that happens the budgets will follow and before you know it you are in the next phase of centralization. I would not know of a way to side-step this effect, unless the plan is to create something that only few people will ever use.
The internet already is for everyone - everyone with an internet connection, that is - and that is precisely the problem. So unless you are willing to drastically limit the influx of users sooner or later there will be a swing back to centralization, for instance by companies that require you to give up some of your rights in exchange for hosting your data. And then you are more or less back to today, only with lots of little data-stores that can be merged at will by whoever controls the storage facility after you cough up your keys in return for something shiny.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#10Given the tendency for wealth and power to concentrate, is it possible to design a competitive, and efficient system where all the actors are sufficiently prosperous without the formation of any monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies? Edit: a follow-up thought. If the answer is no or "it's too hard", then is it possible have something along the same lines, is it possible for the proposed system to self-correct away from mo…
Your second point is the critical one, and I'll add to it — there must be an incentive to decentralize, and it must outweigh the numerous incentives to re-centralize.
We need to centralize around protocols/standards and decentralize ownership of data. If somehow each piece of data on a user were exponentially more expensive to keep, that might be possible. But that would be a very strange law…