This Is For Everyone

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A couple of weeks ago, Tim published his memoir talking about the Web, his life, and yes, Solid. I thought it would be nice to bring it up in this forum, and share our thoughts on the book. Also, if you prefer audiobooks, it is narrated by Stephen Fry; so definitely give it a listen :).

You can find it here: https://thisisforeveryone.timbl.com/

I really enjoyed the book. Tim and the Web are really something special, and I wish more people knew about this story and the ideals behind the Web. I’m of course biased (being knee-deep into Solid), but I think the book is very accessible and should be enjoyable by everyone, true to its title. I’ll definitely be recommending it to my friends and family!

Here’s a few of my highlights:

  • Tim had to fight to keep the Web true to its values, and it was one of the main priorities during its evolution. This may seem obvious to us, but I’m sure not everyone is aware of how special this piece of technology really is.
  • Solid doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s not just a “new decentralized protocol”. It’s a direct evolution of the Web, and shares most of its values.
  • It seems like “Data Wallets” really are the same as “Pods”, it’s just a different way of talking about the same thing.
  • I was happy to find mention of the Local-first movement, and Tim goes as far as saying that it is “a group of open-source developers motivated very much by the same goals as Solid”.
  • To no one’s surprise, the main challenges of today are algorithmic manipulation (i.e. Social Networks) and AI. Solid could prove crucial to tackle both, and we have an opportunity that we shouldn’t miss. It’s not too late (yet).
  • He mentions a map of the web he made in 2002 inspired by Middle Earth. That’s really cool, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere online :scream:. Does someone know where to find it? Maybe @timbl?

And I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of things, but those are the main takeaways that come to mind.

So yeah, excellent book! Who else read it? Did you also enjoy it? What were your main takeaways?

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Picked up a copy at the library, and I’m about halfway through! I just got to 2001 and the invention of the CDN. I really enjoyed the year by year story of the 90’s, and I’m looking forward to the 2000-2010 bit too, as my own professional history prior to 2007 is a little hazy.

You can really see the shape of RDF in how Timbl talks about the relationships being the most important thing. I’m hoping to glean some further insight into how/why RDF totally failed to gain traction with web developers in the early 2000s, leading to the the situation today where I explain what I can do with a tripletore, sparql, and json-ld frames and most people just straight don’t believe me.

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I haven’t read it, but I am pretty sure the map you are referring to is this one.

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Yes, that’s the one! Thanks for sharing :D.

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case that image source goes offline, here’s it again: webworld | Solid Experiments

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Noel, Thank you for the nice review! Here is the map https://www.w3.org/2007/09/map/main-3.svg It must have been 2007 not 2002. We will add a link in future versions of the book.

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Found my way here due to this book :slight_smile: I’m not quite finished with it but did get through Chapter 13 to hear a bit about SOLID. I’ve tremendously enjoyed the book and have been sharing it with my tech book club group!

I’ve been dipping my toes into the ATProto world and felt that they were pretty similar. I’m not sure if the book touches on it eventually but I’m curious what community thoughts are on SOLID vs. ATProto.

I found this post about it already: Comparing Solid to ATProto PDS

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I’m currently reading ‘This is For Everyone’ and I’m enjoying it very much, the history is fascinating and it’s got me excited to learn more about Solid. Some lovely nostalgia about the early-ish web too (pop-up ads! Whoever would’ve thought anyone would get misty eyed about those?).

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Finished it this morning. I was struck by several parallels: Tim and I both spent our childhood in London, we both went to direct grant schools, we both went to Oxford University, and we both had a career in the I.T. sector. His use of language is very similar to mine, too - fairly informal and straight to the point. But I didn’t come anywhere near to achieving Tim’s outstanding contributions to our world. (I hadn’t realised just how many awards he has won.)

The historical account of the World Wide Web was mostly familiar to me, but there were also many things I didn’t know (and will forget again almost immediately). Filling in those details made it an enjoyable read. I remain unconvinced, though, that Tim’s optimism is justified. It seems to me that the problems with existing social media are more to do with human nature than the algorithms (although that is, undoubtedly, an issue). The technology amplifies the human tendency to focus on anything we find threatening, and that won’t change. Indeed, AI may even amplify the fear factor even more than the attention seeking clickbait we already have.

One final thought … I did set up my own Solid POD a few years ago and followed the project for a while, but I couldn’t find anything useful there. And that doesn’t seem to have changed since.

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I don’t know, if I’ve learned anything by reading the book, it is that technology can really shape society. And the most surprising thing in the history of the Web is Tim’s relentless defense of its ideals (or at least that’s my impression reading the book, which I’m sure is biased to a certain extent, but still).

I used to say that “the Web was a miracle”, because we haven’t seen a technology as open and unrestricted as the Web go mainstream since its inception, and we may never see another one again. But now, I see it wasn’t a coincidence. If Tim hadn’t fought for this in the way he did, maybe we never would have had a Web. And to me, the real problem with most of today’s technology (or at least, the one that’s going more mainstream), is that the people in charge of those organizations have very different goals than their users.

But indeed, if the people managing those organizations had values that aim to benefit society instead of themselves… I’m pretty sure things wouldn’t be going the way they are. And maybe AI is the perfect example. It seems like most big players are in an arms race to see who can get the biggest market share and dominance, rather than being more useful to society. Not to mention all the theft, injustice, and waste of resources that is being overlooked to get there.

In that, I agree :(. I would love for Solid and similar initiatives to work out, but so far it’s not looking great. It seems like the Web really was a miracle.

That depends on how you look at it.

If you expect Solid to replace all Big Tech and go mainstream, I agree that’s not happening anytime soon.

But I wouldn’t go as far as saying there isn’t anything useful. Solid is resilient in a way that’s very different from Big Tech. Given that it’s a protocol, it means that everything that’s built on top of Solid is likely to outlive many of its Big Tech alternatives. For example, I have built a couple of apps, and you can be sure that these are going to work 10 or even 30 years from now (as long as the Web is around, I suppose). Even if the Solid Protocol evolves (which honestly, is not doing much), you can still use previous versions of the protocol to migrate your data or whatever you want. Or use a different app, given that you have access to the raw data.

It’s a very different way of looking at our relationship with software. And only for that reason, even if it isn’t gaining much traction, I think that projects like Solid are still important. Though maybe just for geeks like me, and not for society at large :sweat_smile:.