Liberate your data
I have been meaning to write this post since reading Dave Winer’s post titled “Where is Twitter’s WordPress?”.
I have thought about tackling this subject from a couple of different approaches (some of which involve Joseph “Property is Theft!” Proudhon), but in the absence of a better idea, I am going right up the middle.
As a principle, I will assert that I “own” my data. I own my contact/friends list. I own my tweets or whatever we are calling the quanta of microbloging. I own the blog posts I write. I own my feed list. I own the pictures I take. I generally own my media (music, etc.). I certainly own the metadata for my media (ratings, etc.). In short, if I have produced it or purchased it (not licenced), I own it (as a first principle).
Now I am sure that an attorney (I know a few that I may get email from on a post like this) will explain that I may not actually “own” my data that is hosted on a third-party site depending on the contract that I enter into when I agreed to join.
I will sipulate to that.
That said, I will forcefully assert that I do “own” most of the things stored on my home LAN (I can think of things I licence, however) and on my hosted server on which this blog resides (modulo licenced software, etc.)
So I have to ask the a few questions…
Why do we have what I will refer to as a “data architecture” for the much of the consumer aspects of the Web that relies on third-party sites to house data that each of us already owns?
Why does the system that effectively allow these third-party sites to do whatever they please with our data?
Why don’t we have an system that is based on the fundemental principle that you own your data?
Why don’t we have a system that would enable you to control how your data is shared and used, while also allowing you to reap the benefits of a federation of users across Web also sharing similar data (on their terms)?
We could build such a system with all the basic infrastructure we have in place today (although I could think of some new MIME types I would want to introduce).
My question is why haven’t we?
And like all things, that question reduces to “Why haven’t I?”
More to come on this topic, I promise…
Federated Live Mesh + delegated auth + Social Desktop, to put it in MSFT product terms. Maybe revive Live Clipboard too.
Oran
4 Mar 09 at 08:48
In a federated world, discovery is hard. Without a really simple solution to discovery, sharing is hard. And unless it’s online backup, the point of the data being in the cloud is so that it can easily be shared.
Mike Vernal
4 Mar 09 at 15:39
Google provides an existence proof that discovery in a federated world is not only possible, but can succeed wildly.
We need to extend that discovery to a wider range of MIME types and resources.
I think that data being in the cloud or not is an orthogonal issue.
The data on my home LAN is always there and it typically has as much network connectivity as any of the cloud services (more than some, in fact).
I want to both own and share my data regardless of where it is stored.
The key thing is that it is my data and I get to choose what to do with it.
douglasp
4 Mar 09 at 18:21
BitTorrent is further proof of wildly successful discovery.
It’s useful to separate global search-based discovery from identity-based discovery which is more easily federated. Imagine if everyone chooses their own identity providers, runs their own equivalent of feeds for Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc. and chooses what to share with the world, with private networks, and with traditional Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed. Once you turn the world upside down, add federated search back into the mix.
Oran
4 Mar 09 at 19:52
Exactly. I call it “hosted lifebits”
(http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/08/22/hosted-lifebits-scenarios/)
> Maybe revive Live Clipboard too.
+1.
Jon Udell
6 Mar 09 at 03:56
[...] Context: Liberate your data… [...]
Information Liberation Movement at Douglas Purdy
6 Mar 09 at 09:32