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April 6, 2004
Weinberger on ASN's and FOAF
Posted by Clay Shirky
David Weinberger has a piece up at JOHO called
The Truth About Why I Hate Friendster, in which he lists the public but fake reasons he doesn't like the current crop of ASNs (Artificial Social Networks, a beautiful observation), as well as the private and real reasons he doesn't like them, and ends up focussing on the centralized v. decentralized debate.
ASNs are closed networks when it comes to data. Of course they exist on the Net and use the usual Net protocols, but these systems get their benefits by walling off their data. The benefits are powerful. But, like AOL back when the Web started, they are protectionist. As a result, as more data is added to them, their value increases but that value is invisible to the rest of the Net. The open Net becomes less valuable as human links are moved into ASNs.
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) proposal attempts to add value to the open Net. [...]
FOAF is kind of catching on. For example, the popular blogging software, TypePad, automatically creates FOAF files based on user profiles. (Leigh Dodds' Foaf-a-matic will create a FOAF file if your blogging app doesn't do it for you.) Applications for FOAF are not catching on, at least not yet.
David and I disagree somewhat here, as I think that technologies that use a mix of centralization and decentralization are often superior to either extreme -- Napster worked better than either iTunes or Kazaa.
Not that Friendster is the be-all and end-all, but rather that the problems he identifies with FOAF -- the lack of applications -- are because of systematic errors in FOAF, rather than some inexplicable lag in application design.
Universally inclusive and consumable information about me is, almost by definition, going to be so bland as to be useless ("Mr. Shirky is a Pisces, and likes Chinese noodles.") The membrane-bound characteristics he kicks against with Wallop et al are actually useful to limiting the exposure information with real social value. This doesn't mean that there aren't non-Wallopish ways to get the value of semi-permeable membranes, but FOAF in its present incarnation sure ain't it.
Comments (3)
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1. Lucas on April 6, 2004 2:26 PM writes...
Sure, you can use propietary lock-in as a tool to achieve semi-permeability (a nice term, btw) but that's like joining a monastary to avoid being propositioned by women. As a rule of thumb in software design the only trade-off that you cannot architect out is between elements competing for the one truly finite resource, human attention. In this context, the rule tells you that there is a way to occlude oneself without being locked in to a proprietary architecture. It's just a matter of discovering what it is. Can you think of a way?
Permalink to Comment2. David Weinberger on April 7, 2004 9:18 AM writes...
I started to reply here but it got too long, so I posted it on the main blog page, here: http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/04/07/reply_to_clay.php
Permalink to Comment3. Dan Brickley on April 7, 2004 7:01 PM writes...
Perhaps we should (in spec etc) be more careful to distinguish between two technical uses of the term 'FOAF'. There is FOAF the vocabulary, which defines a (yes, pretty bland) starter kit for describing people on the Web. Name, homepage, weblog, url of place(s) you work, photos you appear in, things you've written...
Then there is the more colloqial sense of a 'FOAF file' that has come about through the practice of publishing (usually without passwords, encryption etc) XML documents in the Web that use FOAF terms to describe people.
The key point is that there is nothing in FOAF-the-vocabulary that says anything about whether documents which use it should be public XML files in the Web, or more transitory things exchanged via protocols (Jabber, web service stuff), or even ephemeral messages within a single user's information environment (such as interactions between the addressbook on my phone and 3rd party photo-blogging tools also on my phone). FOAF roll-out has emphasised the 'easy things easily', ie. just slapping data into the Web, but 'everything readable by everyone' certainly isn't dictated by the technology. It's just that doing access control, encryption, and such like is inevitably going to be harder than taking the info-nudist approach of letting it all hang out...
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