Basically, it comes down to synching with the cloud. All I want to do is push the calendar data in the MobileMe calendar to my omputer at home. That’s simple, you might think. But, iCal has found some ‘inconsistant data’ and is refusing to recieve the data from the cloud.
So I set and reset everything, cleared my local calendars, everything. Nothing works. Apple’s Geniusses (no sarcasm intended here) tell me now that the only way to solve the problem is to send my corrupted data to the cloud, overwriting my good data, thereby resetting the connection, and then synch my bad data back to my computer, thereby restoring my connection.

Ouch.

So much for gathering your vital data in the cloud.

Let me explain to you my personal position.

First came the Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 was first coined at the 2004 Web 2.0 Conference by Tim O’Reilly, defining it as

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I’ve elsewhere called “harnessing collective intelligence.”) (source)

However, the term ‘Web 2.0′ has started to live a life of its own, becoming a hyped term. Web 2.0 means you have to spell your URL badly like flickr or tubmlr or toddlr or whatevr. It means you have to have users who generate content for your site. And that the users have the ability to connect, making it a social, sometimes collaborative network. Also, the site has to start with a beta period for invited people only –with users having to beg for invites everywhere– followed by a long open-to-everyone public beta. In fact, there’s a big chance most web 2.0 ventures will never ever make it out of the beta stages.

And then there is the Web 3.0

And now the Next Best Thing Since Sliced Bread has been announced, and it’s called the Web 3.0.  The term is sketchy, as you can see in the Wikipedia definition:

Web 3.0 is one of the terms used to describe the evolutionary stage of the Web that follows Web 2.0. Given that technical and social possibilities identified in this latter term are yet to be fully realised the nature of defining Web 3.0 is highly speculative. In general it refers to aspects of the internet which, though potentially possible, are not technically or practically feasible at this time.

When people refer to the Web 3.0, they usually think of things like the Semantic Web, and artificial intelligence. Some others coined the Mobile Web as the next big step in internet evolution, but that movement seems to have evolved away.

So, what is my problem with these terms? I’ll tell you. To me, this all is the fullfillment of the promise of the Web 1.0.

A (very brief) lesson in Web History

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web back in the days he created a means to access the data stored in the CERN archives. In fact, he tells us:

“I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web.”

Up untill that time, almost all our information was structured to be read by humans, to be distributed on paper. The archives were full of papers, research documents, notes, excerpts, etc. (Note that our current information-products vocabulary still uses terms from the hardcopy-only day and age: papers, documents…). What Sir Berners-Lee did however, was add a unique factor to it: the hyperlink.

The promise of hypertext

Lets grab the Wikipedia entry for the ‘hyperlink’, and look at its history:

The term “hyperlink” was coined in 1965 (or possibly 1964) by Ted Nelson at the start of Project Xanadu. Nelson had been inspired by “As We May Think,” a popular essay by Vannevar Bush. In the essay, Bush described a microfilm-based machine (the Memex) in which one could link any two pages of information into a “trail” of related information, and then scroll back and forth among pages in a trail as if they were on a single microfilm reel. The closest contemporary analogy would be to build a list of bookmarks to topically related Web pages and then allow the user to scroll forward and backward through the list.

In a series of books and articles published from 1964 through 1980, Nelson transposed Bush’s concept of automated cross-referencing into the computer context, made it applicable to specific text strings rather than whole pages, generalized it from a local desk-sized machine to a theoretical worldwide computer network, and advocated the creation of such a network. Meanwhile, working independently, a team led by Douglas Engelbart (with Jeff Rulifson as chief programmer) was the first to implement the hyperlink concept for scrolling within a single document (1966), and soon after for connecting between paragraphs within separate documents (1968).

The very first thing I notice is that the first mention of the hyperlink is way back in 1965 (or ’64). So this isn’t a completely new concept at all, and that its use and experiments with early hyperlinks basically describe the modern world wide web.

The second thing that strikes me is that its purpose is to link data in a cognitive manner, based on the way we humans think. So basically it allows us to relate information (stored anywhere on the network), based on our own logic.

Following these conclusions, by adding hypertext to the World Wide Web, he created a means to access any piece of data or information stored on any machine connected to the network. Note the absence of the terms ‘pages’, ‘documents’ and ‘sites’ in this last sentence.

User generated content

The very first modern webbrowser (WorldWideWeb, running on the NeXTSTEP system) was a browser and an editor all in one. In fact, the web was meant to be editable by users. What use would having access to all this information be if you couldn’t enrich it with human cognitive logic, linking data and making sure that all other users can connect to the same network of links and data nodes you created? Exactly. Not much.

So the promise of the Web 1.0 was that it’d allow users to generate and enrich content, stored anywhere on the world wide network, using their own human logic to connect the nodes. Does that sound familiar at all?

This is where the masses intervened, and when it all went downhill.

The decline of the web

The CERN wasn’t the only organisation conected to the internet who was interested in Berner-Lee’s application. There were serval other research facilities, defence organisations and universities who wanted to use the same technology to publish their own archives and data. Hang on –publishing it? Isn’t publishing it the old fashioned way of distributing hardcopy works? Exactly, and that’s where it all goes wrong. People started developing the World Wide Web as a publication platform, not to provide access to data, but to publish it. And publishing it means that you create a storefront, and try to attract customers to your store in order to get them to access your products (for free or payment).

So, you got sites, with documents which were little less then digitised versions of their hadcopy originals. The promise of hypertext was reduced to a means to navigate the potential user through the store and to access the product catalogs, not the actual content itself.

And from that point on, the web became a mass collection of sites and documents and pages. Because hypertext was so ill used, the need for search engines became apparent, with webcrawler and altavista and some other early pioneers paving the way for the Google’s and Yahoo’s and Livesearch companies of today.

But the web 1.0 was never designed to be like that.

So, Web 2.0/3.0, it’s all the same: web 1.0!

And you can see it in the way Web 2.0 is used now. Yes, web 2.0 is a revolution. But it is in the way we use the web itself. We finally embraced part of its potential, what it was designed to do in the first place.

It’s like we pushed the car around for a few years, and only just found out what the silly metal keys in the egnition are for.

And Web 3.0, the Semantic Web isn’t Tim Berners-Lee’s pet project for nothing. The World Wide Web was designed to link data all across the network.

Fundamentally, no new technology has been applied to fulfill the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 promises. The Web, as designed years ago, still functions as then. It’s just that we now discovered how to use it properly. We finally let go of the rather silly notion that the World Wide Web is a mass library of books, and that you need to browse through the catalogs to get the book you need. And that information isn’t connected unless we, human beings, connect it using our own logic, the same way our brain connects the dots.

We’ve finally learnt to appreciate and realise the promise of the Web 1.0.

And that is why I’m against the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 crap. So next time you think it’s good to tell everyone that your idea is very ‘web 2.0′, please forgive me for scratching profusely and making vomiting noises in the back…

I joined Twitter on july 18 2008, so at the writing of this post, I’ve tweeted for 3 months. I joined because I wanted to try out the popular Twitterific app for my iPhone 3G. I started following a few people I know of, as I had no idea which ones of my friends were a member of Twitter. I followed the tweets made by people like Molly Holtzschlag, Dan Cederholm, Jeffrey Zeldman, Jeremy Keith, Veerle Pieters, Dan Rubin, Derek Featherstone. People who I have never met, but whose work I admire.

Why do these people tweet?

Then their tweets started coming in. I quickly found that they didn’t just tweet about their professional thoughts and actions, like they do on their public weblogs and in articles like on A List Apart. They tweeted about personal stuff like what they’re eating and where, and even with whom. And their illnesses, hopes, dreams, desires, frustrations –very personal stuff by and large.

I joined in myself, following their example. I tweet about my itinerary, about my frustrations, about my location and experiences.

But I have no clue why I do this. Or why those people I consider to be sort of my heroes do this. But we all do, and it feels good.

What is privacy?

What bugs me is that I don’t know why these people, who –as leading minds of the web community have a very clear grasp of the internet– would so willingly give up part of their privacy with no apparent social or other gain. It’s definately not exhibitionism, and they also don’t do it to get more friends or expand their social networks –they’re probably at the top of that pyramid already.
Is it then that they subconciously grasp that the notion of a private life is radically changing in todays networked and information-rich society? With profiles, networks, articles, accounts, events, images and sounds spread everywhere, detailing experience, knowledge, desires, interests, habits and friends, what does privacy really mean?

I suspect that there is a shift in the privacy-mindset, from access to private personal information, to control over personal information. The fact that Tweeps control what they tweet about –but by doing this in the public domain, not controlling who has access to this information– provides enough of a feeling of security that makes up for the loss of percieved privacy. Following this assumption, this also means that twittering about personal events is not for everyone.

This still doesn’t answer why they –or I myself for that matter– use Twitter. There are some practical benefits, but not all my tweets are geared towards those purposes. Let met explain a bit thru an anecdote.

Anecdote

The past 3 days I attended the International Semantic Web Conference 2008 in Karlsruhe, Germany (more posts about that will follow!) I went all alone, to a conference about a subject I know very little about, with a very scientific programme. In short, I felt lost even before I arrived.
Therefore, I registered at the ISWC2008 crowdvine network, hoping to find some people who were willing to help me chart through these unknown waters. But none of the other members were familiar to me –except a few of the gurus like Frank van Harmelen.
A professional assessment I did a year ago concluded that I’m not suited for what they called cold acquisition. Making first contact, so to speak. So I knew this would be a challenge for me. And then I found that the crowdvine site has a Twitter section. You could find which members had added their Twitter ID in their profile. Thinking this would be a good experiment, I clicked on ‘follow’ for everyone I saw.
The days before the conference slowly filled with tweets from people I had never met, but hoped to meet soon. And I easily made First Contact (I can be charming if I want ). So I made some new online friends, hoping I could convert them to real life aquaintences at least. And that they’d help me get my bearings during the conference.

The first day of the conference started off as I expected: I knew no-one in a place where everyone seemed to know everyone else. Yes, the semantic web community is close-knit. During the whole morning I was unable to make First Contact. Then, during the afternoon session, I found that one of my Twitter friends was in the same room, and I let him know I was there too. After the session we met up, and he introduced me to some other people, and that got the ball rolling. In the end I met many many people, and the conference was a big succes.

But it wouldn’t have been if I didn’t have done the Twitter experiment.

Ok, that sounds sad, I know. But it did help me make contact to get the ball rolling. Especially in a semi-closed community on a subject that is very new to me (there’s not much I can do for them), this worked very well!

One of the main reasons is that by using Twitter the First Contact wasn’t about the semantic web, but more personal.

So, I don’t have a complete verdict yet, but in the meantime, Twitter is addictive!

IKKI is het zoveelse netwerk waar ik lid van ben, en waar ik een profiel heb staan.
Mijn werkervaring en andere CV informatie staat ook op monsterboard.nl, werk.nl, werkenbijdeoverheid.nl, linkedin.com en in de kennisbank op het werk. Mijn netwerk heb ik ook aangegeven bij hyves.nl, linkedin.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, last.fm, pownce.com… en vast ook wel op andere plekken.
Leuk, die sociale netwerken. Van de overheid (waar ik werk) verwachten –nee eisen– we dat onze gegevens eenmalig gevraagd worden, en meervoudig gebruikt worden. Waarom vullen we dan overal onze gegevens weer opnieuw in? Het zijn toch onze gegevens? En ik heb het toch al ergens ingevuld?

Web 2.0? Nee, eindelijk Web 1.0 (beta)!

Een van de redenen waarom ik de hele web 2.0 hype ontzettend overgewaardeerd vind is dat het helemaal geen nieuwe toepassing of technologie of zelfs gebruik van het ‘oude’ web 1.0 is.
Het web is ontworpen om *brokken informatie* te ontsluiten. Toevallig waren die brokken destijds veel opgeslagen in databases van onderzoeksinstellingen, en gestuctureerd naar rapporten en boeken… Maar er zat een *fundamenteel* nieuw iets in, en dat was de hypertext. Hypertext (links voor de normale mensen) gaan dwars door structuren, en ontsluit stukken informatie op basis van de *betekenis*. Er werd niet naar pagina 6 gelinkt, of naar hoofdstuk 5, maar naar een specifiek stuk informatie, waar dat ook op het netwerk beschikbaar was, op basis van een relevantie die de maker van de link betekenisvol vond. (zo werkt het menselijk brein ook, overigens).
Al die zogenaamde web 2.0 websites zijn nog steeds websites waar je naar toe moet gaan met een browser, en werken met hún structuur en navigatie en definities, en de meerwaarde van het invoeren van al die informatie is ook alleen beperkt tot die website –meestal.

Het échte web 1.0 (ja, dat is geen typefout) is het semantische web. Daarin worden standaarden gebruikt om de gegevensmodellen te beschrijven, en worden APIs ontwikkeld om de volgens-de-standaarden-gestructureerde-gegevens te hergebruiken voor de eigen applicaties, en vervolgens de gegereerde meerwaarde aan de gebruiker aan te bieden in een vorm die de gebruiker nodig heeft. Dat is heel wat anders dan websites waar geld aan verdiend moet worden.

RDF-resume en FOAF to the rescue

Een voorbeeld: voor het beschrijven van CV profiel informatie is er een RDF standaard: RDF-resume. Iedereen kan zijn of haar CV volgens dat model invullen en ergens publiceren, en vervolgens hoeft daar alleen maar naar verwezen te worden bij alle CV sites. Eén bron, die door de eigenaar van de informatie beheerd wordt, die door anderen gebruikt kan worden.
Nog een voorbeeld: FOAF is een RDF standaard voor het beschrijven en publiceren van informatie over je sociale netwerk (Friend of a Friend). Er is een Facebook applicatie die mogelijk maakt je netwerk naar een FOAF bestand te exporteren. Maar als dat ergens staat, kan je daar naar verwijzen voor alle andere netwerken waar je je registreert. Je neemt dan je netwerk mee. Maak een FOAF bestand voor je persoonlijke, en voor je professionele netwerken aan, en klaar is kees.

Maar we moeten ze wel gebruiken.…

Hiermee wordt eindelijk informatie op het betekenisvolle niveau ontsloten, en gaat het stromen. De informatie wordt opgeslagen zo dicht mogelijk bij de bron, en de regie ligt ook daar.
Hiervoor wordt nog geen enkele nieuwe technologie gebruikt, het netwerk is internet (waarmee de toegang tot de informatie is gegarandeerd), de technologie is een vorm van XML, en het is op een betekenisvolle semantische manier ontsloten. Het is ook niet voor niets dat Tim Berners-Lee (de ‘uitvinder’ van het Word Wide Web) vol aan het Semantic Web staat en werkt.

Maar: er is lef voor nodig om dit ook echt te doen. Dus: IKKI, zorg ervoor dat het profiel te exporteren is naar RDF-Resume, en dat het netwerk te exporteren is naar FOAF, en zorg er ook voor dat je deze soort bestanden in kunt lezen. Daarmee maak je jezelf ook echt open, en biedt je nog meer meerwaarde aan de gebruikers.

Let me explain. When just about any blogger comments on the development of the internet and the world wide web, long discussions about web 2.0, web 3.0 and all kinds of concepts usually follow. And when that blogger considers to rename the world wide web into something as obscure as the Giant Global Graph, this normally is greeted with laughter at that person’s expense. Enter the latest weblog post of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. –Huh? Who? Exactly.

When the ‘inventor’ of modern day’s most succesful technology writes a post about the next step of the web –following its original design, but fuelled by the evolution that it has made over the past few years (the www is only 18 years old!), we’d better start paying attention. All this Web twopointsomething crap aside, he explains how he sees the evolution of the internet, the world wide web, and the next layer: the giant global graph.

Basically, the first abstraction layer is what is referred to as the Net. The major benefit of the Net is that it doesn’t matter how your computer is connected and how the cables go from one ‘puter to the other. The Net was/is designed to connect you to any other computer.
The second abstraction layer built on top of that is what is commonly referred to as the Web. The benefit this brought to the masses was that it doesn’t matter where the documents are located physically, but you can access it’s contents anywhere and anytime.

Most people think or assume that this is what the Web 1.0 was all about. Berners-Lee and his people over at the Cern labs wanting to make their research archive freely available to all Cern and associated researchers. As in documents, files, web pages. But –as Sir Tim has explained many times already, they are wrong.

He now explains the ripeness for the third abstraction layer which he refers to as the Giant Global Graph. This graph thing is a mathematical term apparently and he does make some objections to using it –but apparently it’s a common enough term in scientific circles, and as you just saw, that is where his roots are. The Graph signifies the ‘cloud’ of personal data and data relationships that is available on the web today. The term in this context is most often seen with the SocialGraph, which is the sum of all personal friendship relations you have created on all the social network sites out there. Actually, Brad Fitzpartick and David Recordon have a much better definition:

A social graph consists of who an individual is connected to based on the type of connections, such as work, friendship, interests, and location. It differs from a social network, which consists of who an individual is connected to based on the existence/strength of (one type of) connection, such as work. A social graph therefore conceives of connections in a typological way, whereas a social network does so in a binary/spectral way. I.e. a social graph asks what type of connection exists between individuals, whereas a social network simply asks whether the connection exists or how strong it is. Accordingly, a social graph is a more complex/higher-level model of a social system than a social network.

The Social Graph follows the same ideology and pattern as the Sementic Web –the name Berners-Lee gave his continued work on building the web into it’s full 1.0 potential. Basically it means that you –as a user, not as a developer– choose what relationships you have with other people, and that your identity is connected to your other online alter ego’s, and that this includes your network of friends.

For example: you join a social network site by logging in with your OpenID for the first time, and you get a message saying that because you used your OpenID, and because you have made your network relationships part of the public sphere, those friends you have in your network and who are also a member of that social network site are listed for convenient adding to your friends list on that site. And why is this convenient?

Well, it follows the rather simple and thus powerful idea that friends are people too, and that they are not limited to one network site like Last.FM. I mean, my friends are on Hyves (a popular Dutch Facebook-alike site), LinkedIn (because I made them), Facebook (those with international contacts), Last.FM, Flickr, just to name a few. They’re the same people, why should I have to tell each site that I know them?

The benefits of this are obvious, and the potential for new and improved webapplications are boundless for now. But most importantly, this brings the simple yet fundamental point of who owns my data (me!) closer. When implemented correctly, I –the user– will be the one who decides what part of my network I want to share my music tastes with, and what part my resumé. And if this concept goes on, I can share content other then identity and relationships as well, like my photo’s, or my ideas, or my scribbles, or whatever. Data –more importantly, my data, will be portable.

Lets call this the Web 4.0 (3.0 already having been claimed by the mobile content industry). Naah, lets just call it what it really is: the evolution of the Web 1.0. To finally come closer to what it was originally designed to do.