Post: #1

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web 30 years ago. It seems his project at MIT, known as Solid, is intended to re-invent it, and return power from Google, Facebook and the rest to the individual. The project has been semi-secret with details sparse, but now looks set for widespread development.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90243936/exc...d-wide-web

Post: #2

This sounds very interesting. I would love to see something new come out. He's old-school and remembers what the Net was like before all this centralization took place. He's old enough to remember when email was fun and free of spam.

That being said, I also wonder where blockchain will fit into all of this.

Post: #3

It looks like I am kind of near to where this guy is working. I am going to see if I can get an audience with him sometime in the next few weeks and see what kind of help they are looking for or need to bring this vision to life.

Post: #4

(09-29-2018 08:06 PM)EvanWilson Wrote:  It looks like I am kind of near to where this guy is working.

So am I. My initial reaction to the technology behind this is it sure seems like it won't perform very well if all the data is being loaded (or maybe not loaded, depending on security) from individual pods, all the way down to atomic fields of data (firstname, lastname, etc...). Also, the nature of anything digital that flows through the web means that data can be copied. So I'm not sure this will really solve the problem they're trying to solve.

Post: #5

Me no like bad man take web.

If Tim man make web not take by bad man then Tim man is good man.

I pray to gods of hill and sky for Tim man make web back to good and make bad man go gone.

Me stand ready with rock and stick if Tim man fail.

Post: #6

^basically, yeah. I don't know where the project is going but the guy certainly has a track record. It has that hardness to grasp for the tech pleb like myself which just might indicate a true paradigm shift.

Post: #7

(09-30-2018 12:29 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  Me no like bad man take web.

If Tim man make web not take by bad man then Tim man is good man.

I pray to gods of hill and sky for Tim man make web back to good and make bad man go gone.

Me stand ready with rock and stick if Tim man fail.

Doesn't need to be something adopted by mass market or a parallel internet / social network like a facebook or google without the data collection - there's a few use cases where decoupling data from applications might be helpful... For instance, certain countries have citizen identification numbers/ssns/credit card information that may be required to be linked to financial transactions/banks/tax related stuff -- this technology may be utilized by governments to control information flow.... A lot of the major credit card processors and banks are also researching blockchain utilization for similar reasons... Similar solutions may also be used internally by organizations in future for controlling information flow to subcontractors...

Whether Solid becomes a success remains to be seen of course but one would definitely expect users/organizations to be able to exert more control on information sharing/processing in the next 5+ years for sure. Also that raises more concerns about the security of data wherever it may be housed ("pods", in Solids case) ...but it is relatively easier for organizations to control data being stored solely in-house as opposed to sharing it willy nilly with every third party application or contractor (eg - "Find out what Hogwarts house you would be sorted in,
but we need your permission to collect your demographic information such as age, religion, location, political leaning which is totally needed for the app to work and not being collected for malicious intent at all *hint hint wink wink* type situations could theoretically be nullified) ...the flip side being that if access is compromised, would be like shooting fish in a barrel for hackers. Given the relative uselessness and appalling security controls currently implemented by most governments or govt contractors (the Equifax breach being a recent example) world over, one would think this development is a net positive.

Source - I work in a related field.

Post: #8

I don't see how this is better than IPFS/Filecoin to be honest.



Solid is decentralised, not distributed, it uses the classic client/server model rather than allowing anybody to be a peer.

It reminds me of Friendica and Diaspora, which are decentralised alternatives to Twitter/Facebook. They never really took off outside of a niche audience.

The main alternatives to Solid right now are IPFS/Filecoin, Ethereum's Swarm, MaidSafe, Zeronet. These are all distributed rather than just decentralised, but IPFS has by far the most backing (Filecoin was the #1 biggest ICO with $257MM raised, Cloudflare recently launched an IPFS gateway, Mozilla Firefox recently added support for the IPFS protocol, etc).

IPFS is an extension of BitTorrent technology - it allows anybody to be a peer and seed a website/file/app/whatever to keep it online. There are already a number of websites built on IPFS technology, static files are easy to host and even decentralised databases can be done too. But the real clincher that will ensure IPFS takes off is Filecoin, which is the incentive layer.

Right now theoretically anybody can be a peer and seed a website, keeping it online. But why would you want to? That's where Filecoin comes in. You download the Filecoin software to your computer and choose how many mega/giga/terabytes of disk space you want to share with the Filecoin network, and you'll automatically be paid in Filecoin for sharing this disk space for hosting others files.

There's a similar competitor to Filecoin called Sia, which hasn't got nearly the same popularity but hosting 1GB on there is already only 10% the cost of hosting 1GB on Amazon S3 (which would be the centralised analogue).

Filecoin is still under development and is being launched in the next 3-6 months. I expect that already due to the mass popularity behind IPFS it will quickly get many hosts signing up and that drives the cost of storage way down, likely soon to only 1% of the cost compared to using centralised hosting like Amazon S3.

This means that suddenly everybody will want to host everything on Filecoin/IPFS because it's so much cheaper than using Amazon/Google/or their own servers. Since the barrier to entry for becoming a Filecoin host is so low (just download the client software) the network effect is massive, and it forces corporations to compete with each other and switch to make massive savings.

And that's how the decentralised web will once again become a de facto standard, by giving corporations every financial incentive to switch.

Post: #9

i didnt do any reading.

whos his project being funded by?