Today nearly everybody has an account on one of the big social networks. Although this is a nice way to keep in touch with friends and co-workers the approach to store your whole private or semi-private data in a central way at a data provider that you can’t be sure what they will do with your data is not the best idea.
Now you would ask if there are alternative? Is the next generation internet mature enough? There is no clear answer to this question. If you are keen on publishing your data similar to a social network site you could use FOAF (Friend of a Friend)
. There is a raw file (my FOAF file) that you could visualize with viewer that you prefer (for example my written FOAF Viewer for Android or a web viewer).
But the major advantage of social networks is the communication between the parties. That is with an simple FOAF file not possible and is also not solved satisfactorily until now. For the future the EU funded project m:Ciudad looks promising.
On the m:Ciudad website the project goals are defined as follows:
Imagine what kind of applications become possible when our mobile devices do not only present data but provide valuable information to other users. Suppose that you are able to create instant services with information, contents and knowledge with your mobile device and in your mobile device. And suppose that this knowledge can be used remotely by other users in a simple way, with their mobile devices. And now, imagine the amount of available knowledge of those services. Millions or perhaps billions of potential sources with valuable information: constantly updated, relevant to our instant interests and still context aware.
Imagine you take your FOAF file evaluate your contacts visualize them in your graphical user interface on your mobile device. On click you could communicate in different way with your friends without bothering any more if they are on platform X or use the communication protocol Y. For this purpose the FOAF ontology has to be extended and the communication ways have to be abstracted, but this are things that are not impossible.
Looking forward to working on a better internet.
About Alex Oberhauser
Alex Oberhauser’s current private and professional interests are Research and Development in the area of Semantic Web and Service Oriented Architecture with the focus on the applicability of new technologies in real world scenarios. He is founder of the meta project Networld and the Crisis Information Platform Sigimera (http://www.sigimera.org).
Excellent post thanks!
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