He reiterated the need to  protect whistleblowers like Edward Snowden that leak information only in extreme circumstances “because they have this role in society”. But more than this, he noted the need for hackers. 

“It’s a really important culture, it’s important to have the geek community as a whole think about its responsibility and what it can do. We need various alternative voices pushing back on conventional government sometimes.”

1:00 – let’s think about the planet as a whole. …

1:01 – we need internet government that allows each community to bring particular strengths to the table but that doesn’t allow any one of them to elevate it’s own interest above the public good

8:45 min – having a monopoly has always been a danger.. to innovation..

10 min – i see a lot of energy. i also see web used for protests.. can’t just use as private medium

my data is something i’m really concerned with.. i don’t want big companies to abuse it.. i’m happy if we work together.

11 min – the value of my data to me is maybe of more value to me than anyone else out there.. when it’s on some cloud i don’t have really good access to it.

12 min – dark side – is human nature.. I’d hoped the web would provide tools for new ways of communication…to break down national barriers. . get to a better understanding.. maybe it will happen… but obviously hasn’t happened yet. this ability to demonize each other…. maybe we’ll be able to create tools that will keep us getting along rather than against each other..

“I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web … Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalising, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system.”

[..]

Berners-Lee is one of the pioneer voices in favour of Net Neutrality, and has expressed the view that ISPs should supply “connectivity with no strings attached,” and should neither control nor monitor customers’ browsing activities without their expressed consent. He advocates the idea that net neutrality is a kind of human network right: “Threats to the Internet, such as companies or governments that interfere with or snoop on Internet traffic, compromise basic human network rights.”

____________

from 1996? with Doug Engelbart, Tim Berners-Lee, Alan Kay, Nicholas Negroponte:

http://cs.brown.edu/memex/Bush_Symposium_Interact_2.html#Collaboration

Douglas Engelbart, who was the keynote speaker and the numinous soul of the symposium, has interwoven these themes throughout his life’s work from the very beginning when, shortly after WWII, he decided to devote his life to a vision of using computers to help individuals and groups augment their capabilities to deal with ‘complexity and urgency’.

[..]

Kay commented that

    This was the visit that changed my life.  What Doug Engelbart 
    offered was not just a vision of interacting with the system, 
    but also a philosophical underpinning that is even more important 
    today than it was then.

Kay describes one aspect of Engelbartian thought:

    One of the phrases that he [Engelbart] used that I particularly 
    liked was 'thought vectors in concept space'.  I'm not sure I 
    understand what he meant, but what I think is that you are 
    creating an extension of the kinds of spaces that you think in 
    terms of inside of your head.  So, you are creating an 
    augmentation of the ways of thinking, the ways of representing, 
    the ways of associating that was now going to be extended 
    in a way somewhat analogous to the way writing has extended 
    us but somewhat more like the way we actually think.

Engelbart describes it as a method:

    ...to externalize your thoughts in the concept structures that 
    are meaningful outside; moving around flexibly, manipulating 
    them and viewing them.  It's a new way to operate on a new 
    kind of externalized medium.

[..]

Berners-Lee – .. He described these protocols as fractal topologies that can occur both in network and social structures. Fractal topologies are those that scale so as to be present at all levels.

[..]

In the final presentation of the symposium, Alan Kay gave a retrospective of a period that he felt embodied a great paradigm shift in the way people thought about and wanted to use computers. He described the figures who influenced him in the ’60s and helped shape his own vision of a computing society and its technology. Prominent among these influential figures and events were Ivan Sutherland with Sketchpad, Doug Engelbart and the FJCC demo, the Simula language, and the Grail system at Rand. The people and systems populating Kay’s talk were all examples of successful efforts to do something completely new. His explanation for their success was that at this point in the evolution of research in computer science, the players were all people whose main interests and training cam from outside the field. They didn’t know what the technology couldn’t do, and so weren’t bounded by such restrictions.

[..]

Negroponte .. -But, he also reflected an optimism that the Internet would survive intact when he described the persistence of a migrating flock of birds in which there is always a new leader at the point of the formation no matter how many times hunters may shoot the previous leader.

copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Copyright 1996 ACM 1072-5520/96/0300

_________
feb 2015 – #netgain lunch convo

__________

interface/link

__________

the virtual revolution by Aleks Krotoski (2010, 58:59) via thought maybe site:

http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-virtual-revolution/

what about the other 80% (that aren’t yet using web) – Tim

6 min – in this film – explore how the dream of leveling is playing out for the web.. overturning/challenging notions of ownership/value/expertise business models.. and how the equality promised by the web clashes with human nature – our innate desire to profit and control…

?

Einar  Kvaran – a quiet revolutionary – wikipedia contributor – truth coming up from below

11 min – san fran in 60s – libertarianism – mix of left and right.. rejected state control, legal system, and censorship, while recognizing importance of free will

___________

weaving the web (1999 2000) – the original design and ultimate destiny of the world wide web

notes/highlights:

i would like to thank permanently, irrespective of this book, everyone who has taken time out to move the web onward for the common good.

forward (michael dertouzos) – thousands of computer scientists had been staring for two decades at the same two things – hypertext and computer networks. but only Tim conceived of how to put those two elements together to create the web.

p. 1 – enquire within upon everything

the vision i have for the web – connect anything to anything = new freedom, ie: not fettered with hierarchical classification systems.  and.. it brings the workings of society closer to the workings of our minds.

p. 2 – i pieced it together … articulated the vision… but many other people, most of them unknown, contributed essential ingredients, in much the same almost random fashion. a group of individuals holding a common dream and working together at a distance brought about a great change.

p. 3 – only understanding the web at this deeper level will people ever truly grasp what its full potential can be…

no eureka moment.. it involved my growing realization that there was a power in arranging ideas in an unconstrained, weblike way.

a computer typically keeps information in rigid hierarchies and matrices, whereas the human mind has the special ability to link random bits of data.

whimsy matters.. as the day.

p. 4 – computers could become much more powerful if they could be programmed to link otherwise unconnected information.

i wrote it (enquire – first weblike program) in my spare time and for my personal use, and for no loftier reason than to help me remember the connections among the various people, computers, and projects at the lab.

output ness

p. 5 – computers might not find the solutions to our problems, but they would be able to do the bulk of the legwork required, assisting our human minds in intuitively finding ways through the maze.

handling the chaos and giving us new ways to see..

ted nelson – hypertext man… in ted’s vision, every quotation would have been a link back to its source, allowing original authors to be compensated by a very small amount each time the quotation was read…. he had the dream of a utopian society in which all information could be shared among people who communicated as equals. he struggled for years to find funding for his project, but success eluded him.

doug englebart.. mouse, et al, .. idea was that a person could interface with the machine in a very close, natural way. unfortunately, just like bush and nelson, doug was too far ahead of his time.

next great development in the quest for global connectivity was the internet, a general communication infrastructure that links computers together, on top of which the web rides… vint cerf..1970s

i happened to come along with time, and the right interest and inclination, after hypertext and the internet had come of age. the task left to me was to marry them together.

p. 8 – people at cern – 10000, from different cultures, spoked different language, they managed to find a way to work together because of their shared interest in particle physics…  much of the crucial info existed only in people’s heads. we learned the most in convo at coffee at tables….. i would be introduced to people plucked out of the flow of unknown faces, and i would have to remember who they were and which piece of equipment or software they had designed.

p. 10 – in creating enquire – the only way to create a new node was to make a link from an old node…..those coveted random associations… for every link, i had to describe what the relationship was.

p. 12 – in an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. we think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. i liked the idea that a piece of info is really defined only by what it’s related to, and how it’s related. there really is little else to meaning. the  structure is everything. there are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? just cells. the brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. all that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected…

graeber ch 5 – value –> dream(s)

berners-lee  p. 12 – meaning — >connect(ions)

p. 13 – in tangle, if a certain sequence of characters recurred, it would create a node that represented the sequence. whenever the same sequence occurred again, instead of repeating it, tangle just put a reference to he original node.

the philosophy was: what matters is in the connections. it isn’t the letters, it’s the way they’re strung together into words. it isn’t the words, it’s the way they’re strung together into phrases.. it isn’t the phrases.. it’s the way they’re strung together into a document. i imagined putting in an encyclopedia this way, then asking tangle a question…. the end of tangle.. (ie: a looping tangle.. chuck chuck chuck chuck) – but not the end of my desire to represent the connective aspect of information.

p.14 cern (2nd time – 1984) was a microcosm of the rest of the world, tough several years ahead in time. … connecting even if diff operating systems..

p. 15 – wanted to access different kinds of info, ie: technical papers, minutes of meetings, scribbled notes.. and others kept asking me questions.. it would be so much easier if everyone could just read my database.

output ness

what i was looking for – documentation systems..dubious.. numerous developers arrive at cern to tout systems that helped organized info… .. i saw one protagonist after the next shot down in flames by indignant researchers because the developers were forcing them to reorganize their work to fit the system.

Ed, domain of ones own.. ness.. platform in head..

i would have to create a system with common rules that would be acceptable to everyone.

this meant as close as possible to no rules at all.

this notion seemed impossible until i realized that the diversity of different computer systems and networks could be a rich resource – something to be represented, not a problem to be eradicated.

the model i chose for my minimalist system was hypertext.

p. 16 – they system had to have one other fundamental property: it had to be completely decentralized. that would be the only way a new person somewhere could start to use it without asking for access from anyone else. and that would be the only way the system could scale, so that as more people used it it wouldn’t get bogged down.

i wanted the act of adding a new link to be trivial, if it was, then a web of links could spread evenly across the globe.

there would be no special nodes, no special links. any node would be able to link to any other node. this would give the system the flexibility that was needed and be the key to a universal system.

every (thing)… would be fundamentally equivalent in some way.

p. 21 – perhaps a linked information system will allow us to see the real structure of the organization in which we work.

p. 22 – in the meantime, i got more involved with the internet, an dread up on hypertext. that’s when i became more convinced than ever that i was on the right track.

still ness

p. 27 – trying to get people (who had almost entire system already) to go along with Tim’s ideas was difficult because – explaining the vision of the web to people was exceedingly difficult w/o a web browser in hand. people had to be able to grasp the web in full..  it was a lot to ask.

systemic ness..

p. 75 – 91 – 100 hits/day; 92 – 1000 hits/day; 93 – 10000 hits/day,…i no longer had to push the bobsled. it was time to jump in and steer.

p. 76 – i did not want to form a standards body per se, but some kind of organization that could help developers and servers and browsers reach consensus on how the web should operate. …evidence was mounting that “the web” could splinter into various factions – some commercial, some academic; some free, some not. this would defeat the very purpose of the web: to be a single, universal, accessible hypertext medium for sharing information.

first www wizards workshop (1994 – dale says 93) .. in cambridge… set up by dale dougherty… who again quietly managed to gather the flock.

… dale was wondering himself where the web was going, and felt he could find out, and perhaps also help people make it go somewhat sensibly, by getting everyone together…. (about 25 developers) in his friendly encouraging way, dale got us all talking.

p. 81 – on navipress getting it..  a browser that also functioned as an editor. usually when we had talked about the principles of the web, most people just didn’t get it.

on michael dertouzos and i both wanted the web based in both the us and europe.

p. 83 – on andreessen and clark starting netscape – as free – with no business plan.. they decided not to bother to figure out what the plan would be until the product was world famous and omnipotent.

p. 84 – my motivation was to make sure that the web became what i’d originally intended it to be – a universal medium for sharing information. starting a company would not have done much to further this goal, and it would have risked the prompting of competition, which could have turned the web into a bunch of proprietary products.

i wanted to see the web proliferate, not sink my life’s hours into worrying over a product release. while leading a consortium would limit my public opinions due to confidentiality and the requirement of having to be neutral, i’d be free to really think about what was best for the world, as opposed to what would be best for one commercial interest.

p. 85 – starting a consortium, therefore, represented the best way for me to see the full span of the web community as it spread into more and more areas. my decision not to turn the web into my own commercial venture was not any great act of altruism or disdain for money, of which i would later be accused.

p. 86 – on the conference being penned the woodstock of the web… mark pesce – taking on virtual reality mark up language.. tim talks about ethics in moving forward..

phone convos – with me in shorts on the deck in the alps and al at mit in a suit in an air conditioned office.. then off to the u.s. hired by mit to start the consortium..

p. 91 – although i knew i would be forced to introduce some structure, i wanted the consortium to operate in a way that reflected a weblike existence. the web would not be an isolated tool used by people in their lives, or even a mirror of real life; it would be part of the very fabric of the web of life we all help weave.

revolution of everyday life ness

p. 92 – the web scene was beginning to fill with a colorful mix of different types of people, organizations, and concerns. the consortium would, too. it would be its own web, and sustain a great web, which would help sustain the web of life.

indeed.. now we just need to set people free for that..

on consortium being an experiment of web ness for society..

p. 93 – gates and microsoft out then in.. the web was becoming a business.

p. 94 – on the consortium’s mission – leading the web to its full potential.. primarily by developing common protocols.. to enhance interoperability and evolution of the web..

fitting to be reading david’s value the same time as tim’s web. revolution of everyday life – (with no obligation.. because our communism/gift-ism, is based on equity) – has as its mission – leading the people to their full potential… common protocols: 2 needs as seen in a nother way.

p. 96 – on disagreement between sgml and html.. dale suggests a 3rd alternative.. didn’t have to accept sgml world wholesale, or ignore it. quietly, with a smile, dale began saying “we can change it.” he kept repeating the phrase, like a mantra. “we can change it.”

sgml community passe and html community stronger in fixing sgml..

p. 99 – if the web was to be a universal resource, it had to be able to grow in an unlimited way. technically, if there was any centralized point of control, it would rapidly become a bottleneck that restricted the web’s growth, and the web would never scale up. its being “out of control” was very important.

p. 95 & 100 – ick ness – on profit ness

p. 102 – speech at meeting of the 07 – (7 wealthiest nations) by thabo mbeki: people should seize the new technology to empower themselves; to keep themselves informed about the truth of their own economic, political, and cultural circumstances; and to give themselves a voice that all the world could hear… i could not have written a better mission statement for the www.

p. 106 – in one fell swoop the web had become a major market.. (netscape stock then buying power… )

p. 107 – certain people felt that commercially motivated material polluted the web. i had little time for this pov. the web was designed as a universal medium. a hypertext link must be able to point to anything. info that is put up for commercial gain can’t be excluded.

people have sometimes asked me whether i am upset that i have not made a lot of money from the web. in fact, i made some quite conscious decisions about which way to take my life. these i would not change – though i am making no comment on what i might do in the future. what does distress me, though, is how important a question it seems to be to some. this happens mostly in america, not europe. what is maddening is the terrible notion that a person’s value depends on how important and financially successful they are, and that that is measured in terms of money. that suggests disrespect for the researchers across the globe developing ideas for the next leaps in science and technology. core in my upbringing was a value system that put monetary gain well in its place, behind things like doing what i really love to do. to use net worth as a criterion by which to judge people is to set our children’s sights on cash rather than on things that will actually make them happy.

value

p. 108 – gates turning the company around very rapidly and forcefully, to fully exploit the web. the business community was impressed that gates was getting into this so personally.

p. 115 – i had learned how difficult it is to determine what a reporter does and does not understand, and how vital it is to get one’s story across in no uncertain terms.

janet reno charing microsoft – competition lord ness

p. 118 – the open release would allow thousands of people to improve netscape’s products. microsoft was bigger than netscape, but netscape was oping the web community was bigger than microsoft.

the netscape microsoft stories made for dramatic reading, so they were the constant focus of the press. but they were only a small part of the web story.

p. 123 – the web is more a social creation than a technical one. i designed it for social effect – to help people work together – and not as a technical toy. the ultimate goal of the web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world…… we all have to ensure that the society we build with the web is of the sort we intend.

when technology evolves quickly, society can find itself left behind, trying to catch up on ethical, legal, and social implications. this has certainly been the case for the www.

laws constrain how individuals interact, in the hope of allowing society to function. protocols define how computers interact. these two tools are different. if we use them correctly, lawyers do not tell computer programmers how to program, and programmers do not tell legislators how to write laws. that is on an easy day. on a difficult day, technology and policy become connected.

laws constrain.. in hope of allowing society to function… ? … maybe this is what the web can help fix.. (make laws/control irrelevant).. let’s do this first.. free people/artists…

p. 124 – on the web consortium defining mechanism, not policy…

1996 – web as pure excitement.. by 1998 – battleground for big business/govt

p. 125 – the essence of working together in a weblike way is that we function in groups – groups of two, twenty, and twenty million. we have to learn how to do this on the web.

most don’t know how to do it in person.. no?

p. 126 – on trust.. greatest prerequisite for weblike society….

freedom to choose one’s own trust criteria is as important right as any..

? not following this… seems that’s our problem… trust is there or it isn’t.. esp when we’re talking about how we function together…. no?

if we want things to work.. ie: betterness in the world.. seems trust is the protocol.. the non-negotiable.. assume good. no?

p. 128 – on the scramble to buy domain names – one problem is that the better domain names will wind up with the people or companies that have the most money, crippling fairness and threatening universality…. it is essential that domain names be primarily owned by the people as a whole.

domain of ones own ness – platform in head ness – output ness as a trail via tech listening to/with us, freeing us up to be

p. 131 – if a search engine is not giving me completely neutral results, then i should be told about it with some notice or icon.

weinberger‘s jun 2015 post on our missing out on the architecture of the net/web

.. suddenly, where a person searches the web depends on where he bought his computer…. these button or keys take the user into a controlled view of the world.

p. 132 – the web’s universality leads to a thriving richness and diversity. if a company claims to give access to the world of information, then presents a filtered view, the web loses its credibility.

p. 134 – no one can be aware of everything on the internet, and that blocking access to any one bit of it is an exercise in futility. – somm’s attorneys 1998ish

when someone imposes involuntary filters on someone else, that is censorship. if a library is supposed to provide a computer that gives citizens access to the internet, but it prevent access to certain types of material such as pornography, then the library is deciding for the citizenry what they should be able to read. here the library is installing itself as a central authority that know s better than the reader.

a need for something else ness… at the same time.. and for everyone .. at the same time..

p. 135 – 1998 – patrons of loudon county, virginia, public library filed suit seeking to remove a filter program installed on internet computers at six county library branches. they claimed that, while the filter blocked them from accessing pornographic sites, it also blocked them from sites with info on sex education, breast cancer, and gay and lesbian rights.. just how thorny…. 98 – christian group supporter of filtering products.. surprised to find out they were on list to be filtered ..of white-supremacists and others.. and so banned themselves via cyber patrol..  so pics system to let each customize own filters

the larger point to remember is that laws must be written in relation to actions, not technology. the existing laws that address illegal aspects of information are sufficient.

or too much .. no?

p. 136 – on both sides of making pics rules standard (govt afraid people use it to take over – blocking them; people afraid govt would use it to control them)

p. 137 – here the liberals seem to be wanting to leverage technology in order to constrain govt. i find it troubling when americans of any party don’t trust their political system and try to go around it rather than get it right. the consortium is not going to prevent bad laws by selectively controlling what technology it develops and when to release it. technologists have to act as responsible members of society, but they also have to cut themselves out of the loop of ruling the world. the consortium deliberately does this. it tires to avoid acting as a central registry, a central profit taker, or a central values setter. it provides technical mechanisms, not social policies. and that’s the way it will stay.

again – huge marriage potential here..  rev of everyday life with web.. (berners-lee ness and graeber ness)

then follows (govt) with business aspect.. then academia and endorsements on pages.. et al..

p. 139 – endorsements, as a way of transmitting judgments of quality, work easily on the web, because they can be made with hypertext links. however, important thought this facility is, it is even more important to understand that a link does not have to imply any endorsement. free speech in hypertext implies the “right to link,” which is the very basic building unit for the whole web…… but the person has to be responsible about what he says, just as he would in any medium.

p. 145 – on cookies – in the basic web design, every time someone clicks on a link, their browser goes from server to server afresh, with no reference to any previous transactions. the controversial tool for consumer tracking that changes all that is the cookie.

p. 150ff – privacy.. https..

p. 153 – the reason cryptography is not in constant use in representing trust on the web is that there is not yet, a weblike, decentralized infrastructure.

kind of lost here… is this blockchain ness? reading it – (in my ignorance) – i get the same creepy ish feeling i get with blockchain ness.. ie: web of trust, doesn’t matter if it’s a person, don’t have to trust.. it trusts for you..

p. 154 – automated system will arise so negotiations and transactions can be based on our stated criteria for trust.

p. 155 – the web of trust has to evolve before the web can serve as a true collaborative medium. it has to be there before we can trust automated agents to help us with our work. these developments, which i discuss in the next two chapters, are for me the next most important developments for the web as a whole.

so perhaps – rev of everyday life ness… to get people back to themselves… first..

p. 157 – i have a dream for the web.. and it has two parts.. 1\ more powerful collab between people  2\ collab also with computer – semantic web ness

p. 158 – once the two-part dream is reached, ..

the web will be a place where the whim of a human being and the reasoning of a machine coexist in an ideal, powerful mixture.

a yes. whimsy matters. output: a nother way.

realizing the dream will require a lot of nitty gritty work. the web is far from “done.”

perhaps that is part of the dance.. the ongoing emergence.. perpetual beta ness of us.. ie: if it were done .. it wouldn’t work..

in the city. as the day. all of us ness.

it is much easier to imagine and understand a more enlightened, powerful web if we break free of some of the world’s current assumptions about how we use computers.

let’s begin our thinking about a new world by imagining one in which a computer screen is available whenever we want it. (tying this in to tim’s words – whole world has to be on it… so still far from this – 1999 to 2015)

p. 159 – an essential goal for the telecommunications industry (and regulatory authorities) should be connecting everyone with permanent access. the problem till now has not been technology, but rather regulations that control what telephone companies can charge for access…

the job of computers and networks is to get out of the way, to not be seen…. the technology should be transparent, so we interact with it intuitively.

p. 161 – on xml giving us freedom that forcibly leads us back toward myriad incompatible languages…

p. 162 – by building a hypertext web, a group of people whatever sized could easily express themselves, quickly acquire and convey knowledge, overcome misunderstandings, and reduce duplication of effort. this would give people in a group a new power to build something together.

people would also have a running model of their plans and reasoning. a web of knowledge linked through hypertext would contain a snapshot of their shared understanding. when new people joined a group they would have the legacy of decisions and reasons available for inspection. when people left the group their work would already have been captured and integrated.as an exciting bonus, machine analysis of the web of knowledge could perhaps allow the participants to draw conclusions about management and organization of their collective activity that they would not otherwise have elucidated.

output ness. rhizo 15 and 14 convos ness

the intention was that the web be used as a personal information system, and a group tool on all scales, ..

document everything ness

p. 163 – we don’t insert random notes into finished books, but why not, if they are relevant and insightful..?..

our policy is “if it isn’t on the web, it doesn’t exist…

p. 164 – 165 – on need for universality… allow everything and everyone ness – or it won’t work

p. 166 – on gif starting to charge license fees.. so a small group of enthusiasts proposed an alternative, portable network graphics (png)

both jpeg and png describe a picture in terms of the square grid of pixels that make up a computers screen. the consortium is developing a new format for drawings that will describe them as abstract shapes, leaving the browser free to fill in the pixels in such a way that the image can be shown with optimal clarity on a wristwatch or a drive0in movie screen

p. 167 – on notorious clinton tapes (not only being a huge violation of privacy – earlier), relayed over the web in windows with mixtures of graphics, text, and video, were if nothing else a launch of smil. the language can also effectively save bandwidth.

p. 168 – when significance of a doc is stored separately from the way it should be displayed, device independence and accessibility become much easier to maintain.

p. 169 – if interactivity is not just sitting there passively in front of a display screen, then intercreativity is not just sitting there in front of something “interactive.”

p. 172 – social machines: processes in which the people do the creative work and the machine does the admin. many social processes can be better run by machine, because the machine is always available, it is free from bias, and no one likes to administer these kinds of systems anyway.

p. 173 – them is human beings doing the thinking and machines helping it work on a larger scale but nothing replacing wisdom in the end.

my hope was that the original “discussion” idea, and future mechanisms that could evolve from it on the new web, would move us beyond the historical situation of people hurling mud at each other, or peppering their arguments with personal abuse and vitriol, and replace all that with much more of a reasoned, socratic debate, in which individual ideas, accusations, and pieces of evidence can be questions or supported.

p. 174 – we should be careful not to do things just because they are possible.

a few minimalist rules would ensure fairness.

p. 175 – on anyone being able to start a consortium,.. by pushing a few buttons on the web page of a virtual “consortium factory.”

p. 177 – semantic web – a web of data that can be processed directly or indirectly by machines..

p. 185 – computers will “understand” in the sense that they will have achieved a dramatic increase in function by linking very many meanings..

p. 186 – pretend to think.. the problem is that these systems are designed around a central database, which has room for only one conceptual definition of “car.” they are not designed to link to other databases.

the web, in contrast, does not try to define a whole system, just one web page at any one time. every page can link to every other. in like fashion, the semantic web will allow different sites to have their own definition of “car.” it can do this because the inference layer will allow machines to link definitions. this allows us to drop the requirement that two people have the same rigid idea of what something “is.”

idiosyncratic jargon ness.. and how we get along. words. ness

perhaps nemetics ness..?

p. 187 – the reason behind this approach, then, is that there is no central repository of information, and no one authority on anything. by linking things together we can go a very long way toward creating common understanding.

p. 190-193 – sounds like too much B

p. 194 – right not the final architecture is hypothetical; i’m saying it could fit together, it should fit together. when i try to explain the architecture now, i get the same distant look in people’s eyes as i did in 1989, when i tried to explain how global hypertext would work. but i’ve found a few individuals who share the vision; i can see it from the way they gesticulate and talk rapidly.

p. 196 – it takes only a half dozen good people in the right places.

my thinking – on getting us detoxed.. everyone else’s job is just to be/listen-to themselves

p. 200 – the other extreme is the utopian commune with no structure which doesn’t work either because nobody actually takes out the garbage

perhaps if indeed – the entire world is in on this.. ie: there is no garbage, and/or there are people who want to – take it out. in order for the all of us ness to work.. we have to trust that when we are all on board.. all the parts needed are accounted for.. no? whether or not it makes sense to us..

p. 201 – scaling intuition is difficult because our minds hold thousands of ephemeral tentative associations at the same time. to allow group intuition, the web would have to capture these treads – half thoughts that arise, without evident rational thought or inference, as we work. it would have to present them to another reader as a natural complement to a half-formed idea. the intuitive step occurs when someone following links by a number of independent people notices a relevant relationship and creates a shortcut link to record it.

this only works if each person makes links as he or she browse. so writing, link creation, and browsing must be totally integrated. if someone discovers a relationship but doesn’t make the link, he or she is wiser but the group is not.

output ness… a nother way to live.. that dance with the tech. not focused on the tech or the documentation or the … whatever… just focused on the day… the now.. the people around you..

this is the sort of thing researchers are always trying to do – get as much in their heads as possible, then go to sleep and hope to wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea and rush to write it down.

segmented sleep ness

we want to be able to work this brainstorming approach on a much larger scale…we have to be sure to design the web to allow feedback from the people who’ve made new intuitive links...

or design the chip and the day.. maybe the web is good to go.. if we just do this first…

p. 292 – perhaps that late-night surfing is not such a waste of time after all: it is just the web dreaming.

as a group works together, the members begin to reach common understandings that involve new concepts, which only they share. sometimes these concepts can become so strong that the group finds it has to battle the rest of the world to explain its decisions. at this point, the members may realize for the first time that they have started using words in special ways.

nemetics ness.

they may not realize how they have formed a little subculture until they begin explaining their decision to colleagues outside the group.

the web as a medium is so flexible that it leaves the choice (structure, principles) to us.

p. 203 – there should not be a structure (like a highway system or mandatory dewey decimal system) or limitation that precludes any kind of idea or solution purely because the web won’t allow it to be explained.

p. 204 – on the web with no structure.. to lists of top 10s.. to competition.. to fractals (from lists)… to… maybe we will be able to produce new metrics for checking the progress of society toward what we consider acceptable.

yes.. maybe we’ll finally get comfortable with uncertainty.. embrace emergence.. living in perpetual beta.. non-prepping us for antifragility.. et al.. and then.. perhaps.. not even see the need for metrics.. for a more abundant life. et al..

p. 205 – emergent with own agenda…

like – without an agenda..

on damping mechanisms.. to prevent oscillating too wildly. they have since been built in to the stock-trading system. we may be able to build them into the semantic web of cooperating computers – but will we be able to build them into the web of cooperating people?

perhaps we don’t need them with people.. no? ie: people => natural, money/stock =>not natural

i do not, therefore, pin my hopes on an overpowering order emerging spontaneously from the chaos.

.. we seem as humans to be tuned so that we do in the end get the most fun out of doing the “right” thing.

nice. indeed.

we seem to have built into us what it takes in a person to be part of a fractal society.

already in us. on each heart.

a society that could advance with intercreativity and group intuition rather than conflict as the basic mechanism would be a major change.

indeed.. 2 convos.. 2 needs…

if we lay the groundwork right and try novel ways of interacting on the new web, we may find a whole new set of financial, ethical, cultural, and governing structures to which we can choose to belong rather than having to pick the ones we happen to physically live in.

yes. something not yet tried. systemic change.

p. 207 – we have to be prepared to find that the “absolute” truth we had been so comfortable with within one group is suddenly challenged when we meet another. human communication scales up only if we can be tolerant of the differences while we work with partial understanding.

the new web must allow me to learn by crossing boundaries. it has to help me reorganize the links in my own brain so i can understand those in another person’s.

led by whimsy. slow/free/quiet enough to listen. as the day.

p. 208 – the people who built the internet and web have a real appreciation of the value of individuals and the value of systems in which individuals play their role, with both a firm sense of their own identity and a firm sense of some common good.

ni – ness – re\wire

p. 209 – hope in life comes from the interconnections among all the people in the world. we believe that if we all work for what we think individually is good, then we as a whole will achieve more power, more understanding, more harmony as we continue the journey.

interconnectedness

we don’t expect the system to eventually become perfect. but we feel better and better about it. we find the journey more and more exciting, but we don’t expect it to end.

should we feel that we are getting smarter and smarter, more and more in control of nature, as we evolve? not really. just better connected – connected into a better shape. 

www:

_______

@meedabyte

11/8/15 2:03 AM

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee’s next project: a data platform that gives users control of their data
bit.ly/1RCTpoq curious

http://www.csail.mit.edu/solid_mastercard_gift

will go towards the research efforts of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and co-leader of the lab’s Decentralized Information Group.

http://dig.csail.mit.edu/

Tim’s 2009 ted – on linked data

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

In recent years, various data source platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have become increasingly focused on issues of consumer data privacy protection. Currently, the primary approach taken to ensure this protection is through the use of access control.

[..]

Another reason for consumers’ apparent growing dissatisfaction with access control systems lies in the fact that access control assumes authorized users to also be responsible users, where in reality this is often not the case.

There is no effective mechanism in place to prevent misuse of the released information.

In reality, individuals are more interested in how data is used, rather than how it is being accessed.

so perhaps we take the being used for bad – to zero. ie: rather than change policy B et al.. change the people, ie: do this first.. (free art ists)

Specifically, the gift will help him and his team develop technologies for “Solid,” a system for building decentralized social applications using what the researchers call a “linked-data” platform. Solid …filesystem is the entire World Wide Web.

“Our goal is to develop a web architecture that gives users ownership over their data, including the freedom to switch to new applications in search of better features, pricing, and policies.”

www – ps in the open – io dance

The team is still very much in the early stages of creating the system and is collaborating with researchers from the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) and Oxford University.

[..]

“We need to develop apps that prove that it can be built, as well as standards that show that it is simple enough to be widely deployed online,” says Berners-Lee. “It’s not enough to simply throw a technology into the world and hope that people take to it, but we are confident that once we build it out the project will serve as a new ecosystem that is hugely beneficial to both web-developers and web-users.

need to make sure people using it are natural people ie: free art ists..

and need to model in big enough ecosystem so the dance will dance. ie: simple enough – but also deep enough and open enough

ie: model a means for 7 bill to leap frog to a global do-over

[..]

Information accountability enhances privacy protection through transparency of data and deterrence. Our goal, at DIG, is to enable real-time detection and redress, thereby inhibiting data misuse.

Daniela Miao – speaking at 2014 conf at harvard below – Privacy Informer: An Automatic Privacy Description Generator for Mobile Apps (she wrote page on mit site.. above)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WirLCaWFIK0

__________

nov 2015 – Tim points to what needs to happen for the future of the digital age

http://www.theworldin.com/article/10648?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/thewiderworldweb

In 2015 a typical online business model consisted of collecting personal data and “monetising” it (eg, selling it to advertisers). In 2016 people will push for control of their data, to use them for their own benefit. This will challenge existing business models, creating an exciting market for new products.

[..]

As people assert control over their data, the web will “re-decentralise”, reducing dependency on technology giants, returning power to individuals and businesses, and allowing developers a rich space for innovation.

[..]

The year ahead will see increased demand for data security and encryption, as people realise the extent and value of their “data trails”.

[..]

forward-thinking governments are developing national internet Bills of Rights based upon broad public participation, which entrench human rights and safeguard space for innovation, while recognising the legitimate needs of companies to make profits and of governments to fight crime.

[..]

In 2016 all of us must protect and enhance this public space for the benefit of all humankind.

________

on solid:

https://solid.mit.edu/

Solid is an exciting new project led by Prof. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, taking place at MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute. The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy.

Solid (derived from “social linked data”) is a proposed set of conventions and tools for building decentralized social applications based on Linked Data principles. Solid is modular and extensible and it relies as much as possible on existingW3Cstandards and protocols.

At a glance, here is what Solid offers… true data ownership; modular design; reusing existing data

aug 4 2018

Stephen Downes (@oldaily) tweeted at 7:16 AM – 4 Aug 2018 :
#oldaily https://t.co/yjIN1mTKTc Solid has made its Wikipedia debut with this new article.” Solid (Social Linked Data) is a web decentralization project led by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. (http://twitter.com/oldaily/status/1025732234077192192?s=17)

_________

#dwebsummit

@kevinmarks

#DWebSummit @timberners_lee:

URIs aren’t supposed to be locations, but names – use domains as names

one of the things in the design of the web, UDIs that became URLs – they are meant to be names

someone asked me if the web was decentralized. It was by design but not how it is used now

some of you may have a main job and this is something you do on the side, like me then

its very different now – back then in 1989 I got to work on the web without people looking over my shoulder

there are a lot of ways to decentralize the web by fixing how we use it, not the underlying model

perhaps our issues have more to do w/people not being free/dcent than w/web not being free/dcent – a nother way

a nother way (3 ship) – ie: hosting life bits.. via self-talk as data

there was an argument about whether urls were names, as people thought that URNs could map to urls

if you get a DoI hash you still need to look it up to find a url

all these systems build a form of Commons, and people have to contribute to the commons to keep it running

begs we set people free first.. to common

begs a lot of disengage\ing.. esp disengage\ing from part\ial ness

can we design multiple Commons’s that move data between them?

hosting life bits.. that io dance

this is a great start and huge thanks to Brewster and the archive for hosting

@brewster_kahle: I started our looking at this to back up the web, then found Snowden’s issues

being rounded up for what you’ve read has a long history

Keynote Address: Tim Berners-Lee – “Re-decentralizing the web – some strategic questions