I remember reading about solid and not getting it, and Schneier here made a perfect pitch in a paragraph.
It would be great for all ambitious projects to have this kind of communicator.
Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
11–20 of 183 posts
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#12> at this point, I feel that I should only work on things that matter to society
I wish more people in tech did this.
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#13As much as I like the idea (and the people behind it), I have an hard time seeing how this can succeed. The idea of pod reminds me of the self-hosting movement: people -including myself - host a bunch of services to avoid sharing fundamental data, like email, GPS-history or contacts. Still, "self-hosters" interact with all the big personal data hoarder out there (FB, Google, the many ad and tracking companies) which…
My best guess if it does succeed it will be in the public sector or highly regulated industries, probably in the EU and not the "consumer web" as we know it.
Things like bank account information (PSD2), health care records, smart energy meters.
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#14The problem I have with these sort of initiatives is that they don't solve the real problem. Here's the thing: I want to own some of my data, but I don't want to own most of it, because it shouldn't be collected in the first place.
Solid and other alike work in theory, but in practice I have some serious doubts. I believe that instead of owning your data is far much better to camouflage or destroy your data before it gets out there.
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#15As much as I like the ideas behind SOLID, I just don't seeing it panning out. The semantic data model is exactly the same as the one 10 years ago when it didn't catch on.
One of my biggest pet peeves there is that the default mode of operation is using a de-facto centralized ontology that is mutable and non-versioned. How is someone supposed to build up a semantic database when the semantics can be changed any time from under you?
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#16The problem I have with these sort of initiatives is that they don't solve the real problem. Here's the thing: I want to own some of my data, but I don't want to own most of it, because it shouldn't be collected in the first place. Solid and other alike work in theory, but in practice I have some serious doubts. I believe that instead of owning your data is far much better to camouflage or destroy your data before it…
One positive aspect of Inrupt could be it would make it easier to clamp down on nefarious data overcollection because you’d actually be able to see all the data Google et al were collecting on you in the first place.
Google Takeout exists, but Inrupt turns the tables and essentially makes Takeout the standardized real time default rather than an optional extra. It could be the foundation for new work to protect consumers, not the be all and end all.
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#17As much as I like the idea (and the people behind it), I have an hard time seeing how this can succeed. The idea of pod reminds me of the self-hosting movement: people -including myself - host a bunch of services to avoid sharing fundamental data, like email, GPS-history or contacts. Still, "self-hosters" interact with all the big personal data hoarder out there (FB, Google, the many ad and tracking companies) which…
I wouldn't necessarily equate "distributed data ownership" with privatization of data, but more to the ability for more people to leverage said data more in their favor as apposed to what the digital overlords like FB et al. just allow people to do on their platforms (and their platforms only).
I think as long a some internet users at the margins get exposed to the downsides of the asymmetrical relationship they have with bulk data collection mostly benefiting the few (and have the ability to subvert it to any degree) the digital overlords are facing a death by 1000 cuts rather than the swift blow everyone seems to expect.
Will Inrupt be the thing that brings the digital overlords to their knees? Probably not, that will be best achieved by the digital overloads themselves overtime by creating the conditions for people to even want to pursue and allocate resources for ideas (like those that Inrupt invokes in some) in the first place.
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#18Projects like this never seem to pan out. It solves a problem people should care about but most aren't motivated to act on.
It doesn't actually solve the problem, which is something you would have imagined they would have thought out from the beginning. They basically admit, outright, that their proposed solution doesn't solve the problem: The ideal would be for this to be completely distributed. Everyone's pod would be on a computer they own, running on their network. But that's not how it's likely to be in real life. Just as you can the…
Yeah there are so many moving parts, and so many things vying to be the weakest link.
If we step back and consider what we all have today, it’s amazing we actually have a functional internet. It’s amazing that the script kiddies who are prepared to destroy things for the lols haven’t turned the internet into a dysfunctional cesspit already?
One bit of good news is that Schneier is an authority on the out-of-date router and related problems. I guess whatever they come up with will at least understand the wider threat landscape.
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#19There is a similar project by Rob Pike called Upspin. It is pretty interesting. That also looked very promising. https://upspin.io/
Re: Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
#20I'm more pessimistic. The internet and the apps we use frequently are like a public utility. The space is undergoing an era of massive consolidation and centralization.
This happened with railroads, and electricity, in the past. That period of consolidation was never followed by counterbalanced period of decentralization, a period of people operating their own mini-rail-car services, or micro power plants (solar, but...you know...).
It was followed by steady decline in prices of tickets, expansion in size of monopolies and steady decline in quality of service.
But you know, electricity and railroads became "democratized" just not in a "democratic" way. It's democratized because everyone can use a bit of it for basically nothing.
Then, the companies that made their fortunes often moved onto other high growth industries and the public became inured to the dilapidation, because the product had basically stagnated.
I don't see this company making any statement that suggests to me it can bring about some other possible future.