Solid Standardisation Journey
Solid Standardisation Journey
Institute of Computer Science, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, 2024-02-15
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Web; a social machine
Autonomy & Universal Access
Read-Write Web
anyone being (technically) allowed to say anything about anything
Degree of control for identifiers, data, and applications
W3C Linked Data Notifications design principles
Data on the Web should not be locked in to particular systems or be only readable by the applications which created it. Users should be free to switch between applications and share data between them.
Solid
The aims of the Solid project are in line with those of the Web itself: empowerment towards
an equitable, informed and interconnected society. Solid adds to existing Web standards to realise a space where individuals can maintain their autonomy, control their data and privacy, and choose applications and services to fulfil their needs.
Principles and Process
Identifying things
![Now! That should clear up a few things around here.](https://csarven.ca/presentations/media/images/larson-oct-1987.gif)
Axioms URI
- Axiom 0a: Universality 2
- Any resource of significance should be given a URI.
- Axiom 2b: identity
- the significance of identity for a given URI is determined by the person who owns the URI, who first determined what it points to.
URI ownership
URI ownership is a relation between a URI and a social entity, such as a person, organization, or specification. URI ownership gives the relevant social entity certain rights, including:
- to pass on ownership of some or all owned URIs to another owner—delegation; and
- to associate a resource with an owned URI—URI allocation.
URI allocation
URI allocation is the process of associating a URI with a resource. Allocation can be performed both by resource owners and by other parties.
W3C Solid Community Group
[..] to describe the interoperability between different classes of products by using Web communication protocols, global identifiers, authentication and authorization mechanisms, data formats and shapes, notifications, and query interfaces.
Overview of Solid Technical Reports (work items)
- Protocol
- Identity and Profiles
- Authentication, Authorization, Notifications, Interoperability
- Quality Assurance, Primers, Surveys, Use Cases and Requirements
Considerations
W3C Recommendation Track
Compatibility 🤷🏽 Interoperability
Standards are like wine 🍷
Standards are like wine: some will age well, and others spoil.
— Henry Story
Adoption in the wild takes time and influenced by many variables.
- Standards evolve;
- shaped by cooperation
- adherence to principles (process, consensus, transparency, balance, openness);
- collective empowerment;
- availability;
- voluntary adoption.
Social Implications
- How can harassment and abuse be prevented or handled?
- How would moderation or civil discourse work?
- How can a resource prohibit or consent to be annotated at fine granularity?
- How can the conditions to annotate and notify be indicated and monitored?
- How can a resource’s annotation policy and rules be respected?
- What may be the conditions to associate different identities?
- How can domain expertise be factored in?
Interplay of Profiles, Articles, Annotations, and Notifications
Self-publishing
self publishing entails that an actor can register identifiers for their content, shape and store data where they have access to, set access control[s], and use preferred applications to achieve them.
What Role Could Researchers Play? 🤔
- Share use cases.
- Propose and assess solutions, proof of concepts.
- Highlight emerging patterns.
- Identify lacking standards or gaps in standardisation.
- Self-publish research, reviews, data...
- ..
- What do you think?
Social and Technical Decisions
But.. it is a privilege to have the opportunity to show up.
NIH 🙈 🙉 🙊 FUD