Agreed tedious specifications, but isn’t that what we need in the new world wide web? Doesn’t the tediousness of a spec make it better?
I know it’s not easy but, it needed to be more sophisticated in order to function at the higher level of web we are going to need in the future.
Yes, we need a common language for sure. I’m not sure tediousness is required but… that’s the way it is 
Funny we talk about this, I’ve asked myself several times how much the illustrations in the ActivityPub spec have played a part in making it so successful. We should A/B test that for LDP and PoP tokens 
Tedious specs without a ‘killer’ app will just sit and collect dust no matter how much potential they may have. A ‘killer’ app without tedious specs will be just one of many apps that do things in their own way and end up totally non-interoperable. Can I have both? 
Incidentally, I’d love to watch the movie
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I think we’re living it 
Checkout the Trusted Digital Web as a killer platform that could be built on top of Solid.
Watch the first 3 videos in the Trusted Digital Web playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU-rWqHm5p45dzXF2LJZjuNVJrOUR6DaD
Read the whitepaper: https://hyperonomy.com/2019/11/06/trusted-digital-web-whitepaper/
A mobile contacts app based on verifiable credentials. (Please don’t call it a wallet :-))
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I had thought about how to possibly restrict data copying or make it harder at least (showing raster versions of data that can’t be easily copied). But, if someone wants to make a copy of your data against your wishes there are not really any technical challenges so it may not be worth doing anything beyond requiring acceptance of a ‘data use’ license when lending out.
Checkout Self-Sovereign Identity Model Principles: Identifier and Identity Data Usage Licensing
“More news at 11…”,
Michael Herman
Self-Sovereign Blockchain Architect
Trusted Digital Web Project
Hyperonomy Digital Identity Lab
Parallelspace Corporation
p.s. Ran into the 3 reply limit …so I’m appending this here…
Sort of a #NoteToSelf …about that I’ve read so far on this thread…
- enhancing your personal pod data with external data (e.g. government, weather, stock market, …)
- killer app = parent app that hosts applets on top of a platform of applet services (including secure pod data storage)
- renting app will be a difficult business proposition (IMHO) - the killer app in each category will succeed but most runner up apps will generate little to no revenue at all
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Without owning the data, the front-runner will have far less of an advantage. With each feature addition, the front-runner may change, so the competition will be more fluid. There will be more divergence and more adaptive radiation too.
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Also, the most of services require the minimum user information in order to meet the service level. One options to consider is to use anonymisation/pseudonymisation technics or implement DID on top of POD.
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Haha, but the wallet is the most common term for what you’ve just said if it uses PKI as underlying technology.
I think of my contacts as unique relations with different people limited in scope and time.
My spouse is a unique contact, as long as we are married.
My children are unique contacts, as long as they live.
My business partners are location and business specific contacts
My doctors are contacts limited in time and location
If these personal contacts on my smartphone are shared with someone, in the future I want to be able to redirect, delete, change and monitor their connections or scope.
I could imagine having in my Pod several redirection-IDs to my specific contacts. According to whom I share them with, I want to be able to delete or change them in the future.
Today Google or FB create live personal profile networks according to the phone numbers and our interactions with them. I want to be the master of who uses my contacts.
Your trusted digital web “machine” could certainly establish and control these different context specific contact-relations in a pod.
I’m following this from the point of view of a non-technical interested layperson.
To get true widespread adoption, I feel the key is to think like consumers, not developers. Solid has to be as accessible and intuitive for the ordinary user as Android or Windows (and ideally more so !). How many mobile phone or PC users set up their own Wordpress site ? Very few. People just want to do a quick download and start using it without any significant technical knowledge.
So I see Solid as being an alternative to Android and Windows, ideally something which brings mobile and desktop together in a single platform. Almost like an operating system, or a hub for all kinds of apps. I run a small e-commerce business, our traffic is an almost 50/50 split between PC’s and mobile devices, but we have to work hard to make the site equally attractive and functional in both environments.
Data privacy is important, but most day-to-day users don’t think about that very much, it’s all about convenience. I think Solid can capitalise on that because it doesn’t have the legacy of vast amounts of hidden data-gathering creating complexity. Advertising (and therefore funding) could be on a revenue-share high-privacy basis very much in the way that the Brave browser does it.
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I completely share your consumer centric perspective.
Unfortunately, the web is becoming increasingly a massive surveillance and tracking engine. Only a few techies so far understood what is going on. We are shocked to see the cameras we see on streets in China, but our big software giants are already controlling our movements in a far more granular way. Tim, the inventor of the web, understood that a new privacy-oriented technology might save us. Imagine you have a person spying on everything you do the entire day. Hidden in our smartphones and in all the free software we have digital spies, which sell our data to commercial companies and political parties. Tim is trying to stop it with Solid, but eventually he is too late…
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@svekesi
I don’t think you have read the conversation nor know about what Solid is, please don’t advertise here for apps that take money to steal user’s data
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Big Five, unfortunately, are already using our personal data AGAINST us.
If you haven’t already done, I suggest you to read the enlighting book “The surveillance Capitalism” : The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®
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I’d like to work on this problem with you.
Why not just start simple, and create a basic profile + micro-blog site, that various Solid community members can join and interact with? In fact, why doesn’t this forum get replaced with something like that? Just build a site (let’s call it “SolidCommunity.net”) where you go to the main page and sign up using your Solid pod login. This can create a new data-store on your Solid pod that contains:
- Name
- Profile image
- Relevant profile links
From there, let users post small updates/thoughts about their lives (with a random number of characters…let’s just pick 140 out of thin air…) that get stored/pulled from your pod profile.
Then, let others that have joined the site follow you (this could either be done directly through SolidCommunity.net or somehow associated with your pod profile). Finally, create the idea of groups (created by users) that people can join and interact with each other on.
Honestly, I don’t think Solid needs a killer app, it just needs something basic for the community to start building around, to point new users at to go, “See, Solid works by signing up on a pod, and then the SolidCommunity website is an example of how your pod interacts with an app…in this case a social community based around Solid.” That gives new users something tangible to work with on their first interaction with Solid, rather than either trying to understand how to install their own pod instance (incredibly high bar for most people) or sign up at Inrupt and basically be looking at a blank data canvas.
Love the project, I’ve casually observed for about a year now, but decided to jump in because I think it has potential!
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Great platform “based on the principles of Solid” but apparently not using Solid
This morning I woke up and remembered a dream about a possible Solid app.
I was in a different city and had to book my next flight. As I did not have my smartphone with me, I asked someone for his smartphone. I called my smartphone and spoke with an app, my “personal agent” on it and arranged my flight booking. My personal agent used my personal data stored somewhere else in “my pod”. I knew that my phone number was just a temporary identifier to access my agent. My personal agent used my voice to identify myself and performed my instructions. I was aware that only my personal agent had knowledge of and access to where my pod was stored.
In other words, my dream separated my data in the pod and a personal agent on a device, which handled the distribution and use of my data.
Such a personal agent app could be the key technology to link other apps and our own pods stored somewhere else. My dream told me that Solid needs a data routing instance to make the idea fly. Sorry to bother you with a dream, but what do you think?
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