Research about the Solid Project

Hi all,

I’m currently writing my master thesis at Erasmus University Rotterdam. I investigate the global chances of the Solid project. One part of my research involves conducting interviews with experts from the field, especially within the Solid community.

The discussion topics revolve around the impacts of Solid on everyday internet users, chances of implementation, and the power of linked data. The interview can be conducted through skype (or similar platforms) and will take no longer than one hour.

Would any of you be interested in helping me out?

Thanks in advance,
Sebastien

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I’m no expert, but I’m interested in following your progress, @SebastienGudenburg, keep us posted!

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What is your Masters in?
Solid can be seen from pretty much all angles, from philosophy, to political, security, engineering, etc… see https://medium.com/@bblfish/epistemology-in-the-cloud-472fad4c8282 Happy to help out.

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My Masters is in Media, Culture & Society. More explicitly, I’m looking into how surveillance practices and the exploitation of private user data could be altered through Solid, and what are Solid’s chances among users.
is that something you would be willing to talk about, @bblfish?

Ah yes, that is the topic of my talk https://media.ccc.de/v/pw18-16-epistemology-in-the-cloud-on-fake-news-and-digital-sovereignty . My contact info is at https://bblfish.net/

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I have a fundamental question about solid: why distribute data instead of just creating a data coop (company) to own and centrally control data, and sell memberships in the cooop? i.e. solve data ownership with ownership rather than technology. Food for thought, or indigestion?

Why is decentralization central to solid? Because what needs to change is not just the location of the data but the role of data in society. We currently have a model where we all give our data to a few centralized providers who give us services and sell the data to others. In this model, the few who have the data (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.) completely dominate the marketplace. We want a software ecosystem in which there are many providers who can not profit from our data in the same way. That means changing not only where the data is located, but how it is accessed. By data we don’t just mean your files and photos, we also mean your tweets and comments and likes and clicks … these are what the companies make money off of. Having our files and photos in a private place is all well and good, but it does nothing to keep Facebook from amassing all the other bits. It’s this social data that we are most concerned about. (Solid = SOCIAL linked data). Instead of everyone puts their social data in one place and everyone has to go to that one place using that place’s software we want instead to be able to keep our own social data (doesn’t matter where) and anyone that wants that data has to come to us and there are multiple softwares to do that. Additionally, the semantic web means that meaning is supplied by us in the smart data rather than being applied by AI on smart servers.

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I am reposting this in Why solid? are there simpler alternatives so we don’t get multiple conversations on the same topic. Please reply there.

Sebastien,
I would love to spend an hour to share what I can offer your research.
Jim Schoening.

Hi Jim,
Thanks for your interest, I’d love to talk to you about this! Please write me an email to sebastien.gudenburg@gmail.com, then we can fix a time-slot for a call.

Sebastien, I sent emails to the address you cite. Did you receive them? Jim