Solid (Social Linked Data) - web decentralization
Name
Purpose
During the 2020.12.08 workshop, there was at least one discussion about data privacy and data ownership. The Solid (Social linked Data) Project attempts to achieve that.
Summary of your evaluation
My evaluation here is a sloooow work in progress... or regress...
Description
Wikipedia describes Solid as
"a web decentralization project ... "aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy" by developing a platform for linked-data applications that are completely decentralized and fully under users' control rather than controlled by other entities. The ultimate goal of Solid is to allow users to have full control of their own data, including access control and storage location."
Pros and cons
Pros
- it has a good pedigree: Tim Berners-Lee is no slouch
😉 and MIT has a certain aura surrounding it as well
Cons
- not user-friendly: I'm personally having trouble wrapping my head around how to use it. I've set up more than one POD (Personally Owned Datastore) but I'm still not certain what to do with them.
Indications of maturity level
I would say this is still in its infancy, despite Wikipedia's claim that Tim started thinking about this in 2009, and the fact that MIT got money for it in 2015.
I would put this in the category of "something to keep an eye on".
Mozilla Foundation's Data Futures site is also playing in this space, attempting to aggregate and become a clearinghouse of sorts for this sort of thing. It should be on the radar.