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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?

#81

Post by TaylorAlexander »

acover wrote: post #14
tareqak wrote: post #4

Given 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.

I think this is a good idea. We use intellectual property protection to get money to developers, but then they charge money for things we could be duplicating for free. I think we could improve the lives of many people and lower the total cost of living a good life if for example everything productive was open source. I’ve written a story about this, with an all-capable machine as an allegory for an open source automated economy. That’s here: http://tlalexander.com/machine/

I really want to see more people taking this seriously. Open sourcing the productive world is a radical idea I fear most entrenched businesses owners wouldn’t take seriously, but I think the notion has staggering potential for improving the human condition for generations to come.

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#82

Post by lovemenot »

mLuby wrote: post #10
tareqak wrote: post #4

Given 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…

>> 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…

Dave and I agree with your diagnosis, and we would like to propose a solution. Who is Dave? Well you know him, and I know that you know him and I know that when we both talk about Dave we must be talking about the same person.

(mLuby I probably don't really know you, this is just a hypothetical).

A casual observer could not approach our common understanding by adding more data. There's so many Daves after all. In fact they'd need to subtract all but the right data.

So the solution is a protocol in which increased data adds noise faster than it adds signal. Such a protocol requires 1000s times more plausible yet incorrect noise for every signal. Digital chaff.

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#83

Post by solarkraft »

taeric wrote: post #64
zsck wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty clearly not the case. Apple and Facebook are companies, not platforms. The platforms these companies develop are wildly successful and loved by developers. I think you may be too focused on how developers decide a platform that is already successful. In that case, yes, which one is already adopted the most deserves strong consideration. However, when it comes to actually achieving adoption, it’s the pl…

I suspect this is reversing causality. Developers flock to the platform that is succeeding. This is true of most things. Applicants flock to the industry that is hiring the most. It would be nice if the industry hiring the most was the most worthy, but that is doubtful. Consider mining communities.

Of course it's both. But I think (independent) developers are much more likely to publish for a platform they think is fun to develop for.

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#85

Post by frabcus »

edhelas wrote: post #77

By reading the Solid website I was wondering if it was not basically what OpenID tried to offers 10 years ago? https://openid.net/what-is-openid/ > OpenID allows you to use an existing account to sign in to multiple websites, without needing to create new passwords. > You may choose to associate information with your OpenID that can be shared with the websites you visit, such as a name or email address. With OpenID,…

There are some similarities. But the key difference are:

1) Solid is designed for you to store large, complete sets of data you care about over the protocol. OpenID is mainly about identity, and the associated bits of metadata are small and can't be written to by the OpenID protocol.

2) Solid separates the data storage from the application provider. So all your data could be in your Solid personal data store, and none in the application provider. (This was normal on Microsoft Windows in the 1990s, so think of it as a cloud version of that model of application development / data storage).

This is a high level quick answer - correct me if I've misrepresented something. Quickly looking there are lots of OpenID-related standards that I've never read or used, and I bet some write data!

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#86

Post by sonnyblarney »

egonschiele wrote: post #20
zsck wrote: post #12

A 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.

"Developers hate apple, facebook, and countless other platforms that are doing very well. "

No, most developers don't hate anything. Most developers are just normal people makin' stuff because their company pays them to.

Most developers are not particularly ideological.

Just some of us are ... perhaps a little bit more than in other industries.

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#87

Post by jillesvangurp »

The man deserves credit of course for helping create the first browsers and promoting the early web and his work for W3C. However, Tim's track record is not great when it comes to backing new versions of the web. E.g. Semantic Web never happened and arguably this is his latest attempt at flogging that dead horse. So, my prediction is that this won't get very far. It seems the website is a bit hand-wavy on the actual substance or vision and from what I'm seeing there's not actually a lot there. This looks like a research prototype to me.

I like the idea of decentralized as much as the next geek. However, there's a tendency of complex decentralized stuff being something that normal people don't really grasp or see the value of. Also, a lot of this value is not very tangible or even real. Most p2p systems have a hard time competing against a well run centralized system.

A lot of these decentralized Facebook/Twitter alternatives are being populated by people that, well, aren't that social. If you are like that, the empty room problem (you have no friends until world + dog joins) is not a big problem. You might even consider that a feature and not a bug. However, solving the empty room problem really is the key problem for social networks. How do you get all the social media whores, self pro-claimed influencers, etc. from endorsing your super duper decentralized platform and wanting to be there? Mostly that never happens.

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#88

Post by luckystarr »

unmole wrote: post #66
mrep wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the runaway success of microtransactions What are you talking about?

I'm guessing he was talking about the revenue model of the most profitable mobile games.

Especially the fact that it's working.

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#89

Post by tuesdayrain »

egonschiele wrote: post #20
zsck wrote: post #12

A 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.

I can't imagine hating Facebook as a developer. Just because some people hand over their personal information to them? I'll gladly overlook that when they gave me things like React, React Native. GraphQL, Jest, Flow.

Re: How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?

#90

Post by comboy »

zsck wrote: post #12

A 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…

> it needs to be a platform that people want to develop for

Have you tried developing an app for it? Docs are solid, but time is valuable. Why don't they include a bunch of super simple apps to show how it all works and make entry as easy as possible?

I want solid to succeed (well, anything comparable is also ok), but as much as I don't like it, marketing wins over how good the product is. That's just how it is today. That's how open source libraries and projects grow. It has to do with tons of available information, world moving forward very fast and our limited attention.

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