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How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
11–20 of 176 posts
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#12A lot of folks seem to think this kind of technology needs to be marketed or launched the way a hip Silicon Valley startup should be. I understand how the argument that critical mass is the necessary ingredient for success would appeal to people, but it’s not like the Internet succeeded that way. In fact, it’s probably better if foundational technology like this is developed and grown more slowly and deliberately. I have no idea if solid will take off the way the web has, but it stands a fighting chance. More than being a “viable competitor” to the web, it needs to be a platform that people want to develop for. As with the web, cloud and mobile ecosystems, the platform that developers want to support is the one that wins. If you want to see something like solid take off, play around with it for a bit. Try making it go and share your experience.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#13Obligatory 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 p…
It's not about avoiding marketing. It's about ownership and control.
If I want my stuff to be analysed- I let that happen- it finds business or social matches- awesome. I just need the option to turn that off for things I don't want greped- like banking.
I too am in favor of paid for services. Because that is what happens eventually. You pay for it. I'd rather make a decision and choose who I pay, as opposed to having my choices and VIEW-OF-THE-WORLD limited because everything is "free" but funded by marketing.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#14Given 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…
Tech has a tendency to become monopolistic. Well funded open source competitors seem like a solution as it would allow anyone to compete.
Fund the development of software and not the distribution. It would realign incentives to the consumers.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#15Obligatory 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 p…
It's not about avoiding marketing. It's about ownership and control. If I want my stuff to be analysed- I let that happen- it finds business or social matches- awesome. I just need the option to turn that off for things I don't want greped- like banking. I too am in favor of paid for services. Because that is what happens eventually. You pay for it. I'd rather make a decision and choose who I pay, as opposed to havin…
I would love to 'own' all my data. But companies offering services will win out because they do not have to play nice with you or your data store. Take Gmail, Facebook or Google docs as examples. In principle that's your data. But Gmail has successfully convinced people that Google is able to run its mail service better than you or your corporation ever could. In return for 'reading your mail', and vast amounts of corporations and individuals seem to believe them.
Ditto for Facebook and yet another encore for Google docs.
Once established economies of scale and network effects will do the rest. A new system would have to fix a lot more than just the security angle because it is well known that security is always going to be secondary to convenience, a factor that large entities will find much easier to control than many small ones.
So, I really hope they will manage but I'm not going to hold my breath until they do. Note this comes from a guy that does not have a Facebook account, no smartphone, runs his own web and mail server.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#16Given 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…
Yeah, it probably more realistic (and possibly even ideal in its own way) to assume that obtaining the desired equilibrium will always be an adversarial process. Having proven ways to measure the dominance of each actor or having canaries / alerts is important, but not enough: there has to be ways to measures detect if anyone has subverted, gamed, or compromised the measures themselves.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#17It seems the author is missing the point in advocating big government solutions and government regulation to somehow fix the privacy problem.
Imagine if you owned and controlled all your email vs. gmail reading it all? For companies, owning their proprietary data is an enormous market. I'm planning to launch a Solid service on top of Allegrograph in the next month or two to service my business customers.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#18Can anyone name one for-profit company that wants to build software on Solid?
graphMetrix.com - Solid service to support business customer data launching in the next 2 months.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#19Given 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…
> is it possible
See "Economies of Scale" [1]
To the degree that efficiency is increased with larger scale, the market will become an oligopoly or monopoly.
Most things are economies of scale: healthcare, social networks, manufacturing, network protocols.
Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?
#20A lot of folks seem to think this kind of technology needs to be marketed or launched the way a hip Silicon Valley startup should be. I understand how the argument that critical mass is the necessary ingredient for success would appeal to people, but it’s not like the Internet succeeded that way. In fact, it’s probably better if foundational technology like this is developed and grown more slowly and deliberately. I…
> the platform that developers want to support is the one that wins.
This is very hard to believe. Developers hate apple, facebook, and countless other platforms that are doing very well. Adoption is the fundamental problem, not what developers want to support. The platform with the most users is what people will develop for.