Find an answer to “What is Solid?”

[pjworrall]

Is it not better to discuss here this https://github.com/orgs/solid/teams/explaining-the-vision-panel/discussions ? I would like to understand the Vision etc. first as well which we started discussing there.

[RubenVerborgh]

Not sure, never worked with GitHub discussions before. However, I didn’t get a notification for the thing you posted there, so that’s not a good sign. I’d hence suggest issues.

[RubenVerborgh]

Trying this as a discussion https://github.com/orgs/solid/teams/explaining-the-vision-panel/discussions/4 (although I still think of this as an issue that should be ticked off).

[RubenVerborgh]

My take:

Solid is an ecosystem around technologies that foster innovation and empower people by offering precise control over data across application and organization boundaries.

[pjworrall]

Counter Solid is an ecosystem of [] working to provide people with the freedom to choose who has access to their information and what software and services they can use with it.

[RubenVerborgh]

In general, I think it is important to emphasize both sides: the people whose data is stored, and those doing things with that data. Today's problems aren't limited to people: Facebook is not just my problem, it's also the problem of whoever wants to develop a nice Web application that needs people to log in and provide a couple of basic pieces of data.

And also, Solid is not just about personal data; it equally holds for company data.

When in doubt, it's probably useful to think about the Web. The Web is not just also a place for people to find information, it's also where companies do business.

[danwilkinsoncreative]

Would it be better to refer to them as 'web users' rather than people? That could cover organisations and groups with singular identities too

[danwilkinsoncreative]

Just going back to the embodiment noun, I find 'eco-system' a little too vague unless we can add specificity around what it's an ecosystem of. I like that it makes the scope for what Solid can constitute really broad but for people to get what it is I think we'd need to give them more of a cue to its actual manifestations.

[RubenVerborgh]

'web users' rather than people

I'm not a big fan of calling people "users" 🙂 (Why is it that only drug dealers and software vendors refer to their customers as "users" 😉)

Also because this is not just about people on the Web. Is about people. Including people going to a supermarket or a bank, because these also involve personal data.

I find 'eco-system' a little too vague unless we can add specificity around what it's an ecosystem of

See my suggestion above: "around technology that…".

Can also be "ecosystem of people, data, apps" (have used that before), but that phrasing would have caused repetition in my definition.

[danwilkinsoncreative]

I'm not a big fan of calling people "users" 🙂 (Why is it that only drug dealers and software vendors refer to their customers as "users" 😉)

Ha how very true! :)

Ultimately, this all centres around identities doesn't it? What the individuals, businesses and organisations all have in common is a unique identity to which data is attributed. Is there a way to phrase it around that somehow?

Also because this is not just about people on the Web. Is about people. Including people going to a supermarket or a bank, because these also involve personal data.

OK so we really are looking that expansively? In that case we definitely have to express all this in everyday terms.

[RubenVerborgh]

have to express all this in everyday terms

Not necessarily; we can also just leave some things open, and not express them. As long as what we express doesn't exclude it, we're good.

My definition still meets those criteria, for instance. (It might of course still have other deficits.)

[pjworrall]

Tried to reflect the points made:

"Solid is an ecosystem of people, standards and software ensuring you have control over your data and the freedom to choose and change the software and services you use."

[pjworrall]

Tried to reflect the points made:

"Solid is an ecosystem of people, standards and software ensuring you have control over your data and the freedom to choose and change the software and services you use."

A question worth reflecting on is "ecosystem" the main point we want to get across about what Solid is. Because could it be:

"Solid is technology that enables you to have control over your data and the freedom to choose and change the software and services you use."

[danwilkinsoncreative]

I guess it ultimately comes down to what Solid aims to provide. Is it software solutions for everyone to use? Is it standards for other to follow in creating solutions? Is it a collective of people driving change? Being all three seems a bit of a stretch...

[pjworrall]

I guess it ultimately comes down to what Solid aims to provide. Is it software solutions for everyone to use? Is it standards for other to follow in creating solutions? Is it a collective of people driving change? Being all three seems a bit of a stretch...

To say it is "Technology" classifies it in way that most people would be familiar dumping a lot of concepts into: including expertise of people, hardware, software, design patterns, protocols, math etc.. .

"Ecosystem" does imply a community in an environment interacting for a common cause. That implies there is some governance which the W3C influence of course is. The technology , in its many forms, is the output of that. So that would imply Ecosystem comes first.

[pjworrall]

How about:

"Solid is an Ecosystem [feels like "of something" requires] working to provide technology that enables you to have control over your data and the freedom to choose and change the software and services you use."

[kjetilk]

I like the idea of an ecosystem very much, but in the time I spent before joining Inrupt, I found it really, really hard to get people to grasp the idea. So, I'm not sure it would be understood.

It might be that we should constrain ourselves to what are our technical contributions. We might then try to explain what social and economical impacts we anticipate, but I think that might be overstating our prophetic abilities ;-) Instead, perhaps we should say that we do this in the hope that society will take this to bring about such and such social changes, emphasizing that is an extension of the project's goals.

[pjworrall]

How a message house might shape up.

[pjworrall]

I like the idea of an ecosystem very much, but in the time I spent before joining Inrupt, I found it really, really hard to get people to grasp the idea. So, I'm not sure it would be understood.

Do you meant they didn't grasp the idea that Solid is a community or a *movement working on a technology to put people in control of their data?

[pjworrall]

It might be that we should constrain ourselves to what are our technical contributions. We might then try to explain what social and economical impacts we anticipate, but I think that might be overstating our prophetic abilities ;-) Instead, perhaps we should say that we do this in the hope that society will take this to bring about such and such social changes, emphasizing that is an extension of the project's goals.

Like "Solid is a technical specification and architecture that separates data from software so that there is more freedom, choice and control over how it is used"

or

Like "Solid is a technical specification and architecture that enables you to place data in a store of your choice and under your control, and for software to be able to easily provide useful features without needing to take control of your data."

[danwilkinsoncreative]

It might be that we should constrain ourselves to what are our technical contributions. We might then try to explain what social and economical impacts we anticipate, but I think that might be overstating our prophetic abilities ;-)

@kjetilk I guess in that regard we have our Vision and Mission (which I won't get into in this Issue) which give us scope to talk of much broader impact without implication of Solid delivering it all on its own.

[pjworrall]

Just applying the message house to :

"Solid is an ecosystem around technologies that foster innovation and empower people by offering precise control over data across application and organization boundaries."

[pjworrall]

fyi

I just used the following in an email to a Government Department in the UK:

"Solid is a technology that builds on the current Web standards that enables people to have control over their data and the freedom to choose and change the software and services they use."

[danwilkinsoncreative]

Hmm feels like we're swirling around lots of different versions now but not sure we've answered some fundamental questions yet.

Before we look at any more lines @pjworrall can I suggest we break the statement down a bit so each element can be debated? To my mind, it consists of at least 3 elements:

Solid is [the form it takes] that [what it does] for [who it serves]

If we can just focus on answering the first one - [the form it takes] - to begin with then we can move on to the rest and build an accurate statement.

There are concerns about the word 'eco-system' but are we all agreed that Solid takes more than just a singular form e.g. tool, standard, convention, community and is in fact a combination of multiple forms?

[kjetilk]

Do you meant they didn't grasp the idea that Solid is a community or a *movement working on a technology to put people in control of their data?

To the extent that I can decipher things from the blank stares I was getting, I think that the problem was that they had a very functional view of technology, in the sense that technology companies operate within a certain domain and things they introduce has certain range of expected outcomes. Also, the domain is managed by the leadership and the board, and the range is understood in terms of markets and market share, regulations and such. In that world, both domain and range are rather constrained things, but instrumental to understand these boundaries for them. So, they were primarily interested in the domain that it would be operating within, and how I had analyzed the range.

An ecosystem is an entirely different thing, the domain is "everything" in the sense that it affects everything, social life, all commercial life, governments, and the range of expected outcomes for a commercial entity is much harder to see. So, I had a total failure in trying to bridge my own ecosystem thinking with that much more constrained view.

So, my concerns are mainly around two points:

1. We have to acknowledge that the actual social impact is unknown to us. We have expectations, visions and dreams, sure, and that is why we're doing this in the first place (or I certainly am). Nevertheless, what will actually happen after introduction of the technology is uncertain, and properly equipped social and political scientists are probably better suited to study it than we are ourselves. Therefore, I think we should have some humility when formulating the answer to the "what is"-question.
2. Secondly, there are those that need a precise definition, but do not have the frame of mind to accept a definition of a technology that is mainly motivated from its social and commercial impact on whole societies.

I think that explaining the expected social and commercial impact is better suited when giving a talk on Solid, than in here.

[pjworrall]

I agree.

Solid is [the form it takes] that [what it does] for [who it serves]

If we can just focus on answering the first one - [the form it takes] - to begin with then we can move on to the rest and build an accurate statement.

If we are not too sure Ecosystem is concrete enough them maybe the form it takes is:

..technical standards, design patterns and software tools..

[jimschoening]

1. Solid: Individuals controlling their data [This is the main point, in 4 words.]

2. Solid: Join the global revolution to take back control of your data, privacy, and civil liberties. [People like joining revoluions. Or shorter, Solid is 'Digital independence.']

[danwilkinsoncreative]

Mitzi added some quotes from timbl on here https://github.com/solid/Explaining-the-Vision-Panel/tree/master/Tim-describing-Solid which I think are useful in framing this conversation. The form Solid takes being a 'standard', for instance.

We also have https://solid.mit.edu/ where it's referred to as 'a (proposed) set of conventions and tools'.

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

"Solid is a standard" :)

[Mitzi-Laszlo]

(then need to insert what standard should do)