The next generation social networks -3-

Add comment December 3rd, 2006 Robert Bosman

Trust is the cement of society.
And trust levels are based on experience and data…

Let’s talk a little more about the main characteristics of the next web, using an addition to the graphic used in the previous two blog posts.

The characteristics more in detail:

• Universal Relation Model : The next web will be based on Universal Relation Management®, enabling all participants to create, see, edit and terminate that data for which they are directly responsible. That Data Tango can not be performed without a proper definition of mutual relations. A CEO of a company, for example, only has the rights to act on behalf of that company as long as he has a non terminated relation with that company as a CEO. That relation has implications both for the individual as well as for the organization involved; it is the relationship that defines the rights of an individual in a certain context. Therefor, without a Universal Relation Model we can never organize a proper exchange of data for the entire interconnected web.

• P, O and G use 1 standard : In the next web People, Organizations as well as Governments will generate, share and validate interconnected data of all kinds, together establishing the ‘Data Tango’. It is impossible to do so properly and efficiently, without sharing the same URM standard. Positively formulated: sharing the same URM standard will boost the co-creative society and will enable all kinds of data validation services, that together will increase the Trust Levels in society and decrease the tremendous opportunities for criminals and terrorists, caused by the weak data reliability today.

• Multi-role : The next web will provide a URM-based infrastructure for people acting in different roles. In the example above, the CEO - role is a specific relationship between a person and an organization. But that person will have more than one role, at least personally but also in other organizations and in society as such.

• Multi-dimension : The individual with, among others the CEO, will look at his Agenda, his Todo’s, his Network, his Roles, his Web-accounts etc, from a different view than the organizations (and governments) he has relations with. Depending on who is looking, they see a different set of the same data and have different rights and obligations to update these data. The next web will facilitate that.

• Full data aggregation : In the next web it will be easy to see and maintain for each dimension the total aggregation of all relevant data. A person for example, will no longer see only the personal network he has in a specific social network site, he will see his full, aggregated personal network of all social networks and organizations he is connected to, including his personal network. In the same way he will see his aggregated agenda, aggregated todo’s etc. Finally Ray Ozzie’s problem will be solved…

• Service Oriented : In the next web there will be much and much more webservices than we even can think about now. Also the kind of webservices will be beyond any imagination.

• Co-creative : The next web will be about the communication, organization and administration interface of Society 4.0, the creative society we will shape together. The old roles of employer and employee will transcend in a new economic order, in which the collective intelligence and the collective creativity can grow as never before.

• Validated Trust Levels : Trust is the cement of society. The URM based next web will enable us to easily validate all kinds of data by innovative webservices (in the graph showed as the yellow V). This will help to increase the Trust Level of our society and to diminish all kinds of misuse. Be well, misuse will be of all times, but the poor data organization of our times help so many criminals and terrorists, that trust goes down and anger and anxiety are growing. That has to be changed.

These characteristics of the next web are at the same moment an absolute necessity - a ‘Conditio Sine Qua Non’ - in order to reach it’s full potential. Once it is realized, people will not even be able to image an world without it.

Technorati Tags: web accounts, web ID, identity, relation, digid, federated login, verification, web 2.0, URM, data aggregation, social networks, co-creation, society, practosophy

  
  

  

  

  

The next generation social networks -1-

Add comment November 22nd, 2006 Robert Bosman

What is the main frustration of the active web 2.0 users? All those different accounts! And all those different login names and passwords! But even more: the impossibility to aggregate the data you need, both personal and organizational.

It is almost 2007. Never ever was technology so powerful. But the common user can’t even process the list with names and addresses for his Christmas Cards! (see also the weblog of Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie). How is that possible?

The answer is simple: almost all software uses the architecture of the past, the architecture of limited memory, limited connections, limited speed. The data islands, we had to create in the past because of this limitations, are still our “mental” models today. And that has to change. That will change. It is even changing rapidly at the moment.

All what people create, starts in the mind of - most of the times - one person (see also Vision & Action). But don’t think that is, because he or see is so brilliant. It is just because it is time for that idea! And when it is time, live itself will create a ‘point of entry’, a tiny little beginning for such an idea. And then, live will create an audience, people who did not generate the idea, but instantly recognize it. And whenever that happens, the sky is literally the limit! And the original idea will change because of the aggregated ‘wisdom of people’, so much, that the ‘original thinker’ sometimes does not even recognize his idea any longer…
That is what happened also to the web. In a series of weblog entries with the title ‘The next generation social networks’, we will look after this development more in detail. I agree, we were not that active in writing blog entries over the last weeks, but that had it’s reasons. We were busy co-creating the future of the web… Exciting discussions with ‘captains of the industry of the future’, in which we shared ideas. And we will share the most interesting ideas with you.

First of all, let’s one more time look at the ‘big picture’.

The first phase of the web was al about websites and email. In 1996 - 10 years ago - the then new XML standard opened new horizons; in 2000 Microsoft even changed it’s whole corporate strategy and made XML and web portals one of the most significant building stones for it’s future. Whenever we log in and for example book a hotel or airplane, we use XML.

And about 2 years ago, someone (Tim O’Reilly) spoke a new word: Web 2.0, often explained as the web of social networks. As you may know form earlier blog posts, we prefer the name web 3.0 for it. In essence the social networks of today are nothing more than very special XML-based web portals. The modern social networks allow their users to find each other. But only one network at a time and with searches as far as that particular network allows.

In other words: the present generation social networks does not allow any form of data aggregation from different web accounts. And that will change in the next generation social networks. And more. But that’s for the next blog posts…

Technorati Tags: web accounts, web frustration, web 2.0, URM, data aggregation, social networks, co-creation, society, practosophy

Euler’s fundament of 1736

Add comment September 6th, 2006 Robert Bosman

‘No problem can be solved with the same
level of thinking, that created it.’ (Einstein)

In order to create a new Architecture for both Society 4.0 and Web 4.0, we need an approach that is different form anything that created the past and the present. My proposal is to start in 1736, when the Swiss physicist and mathematician Leonhard Euler solved the so called problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. The city of Kaliningrad, Russia (at the time, Königsberg, Germany) is set on the Pregolya River, and included two large islands which were connected to each other and the mainland by seven bridges. The question is whether it is possible to walk with a route that crosses each bridge exactly once, and return to the starting point.

Euler proved that it was not possible. To do so Euler rephrased the problem in terms of graph theory, by abstracting the case of Königsberg — first, by eliminating all features except the landmasses and the bridges connecting them; second, by replacing each landmass with a dot, called a vertex or node, and each bridge with a line, called an edge or link. The resulting mathematical structure is called a graph.

Euler realized that the problem could be solved in terms of the degrees of the nodes. The degree of a node is the number of relations connecting it with other nodes. In the Königsberg bridge graph, three nodes (B, C & D) have degree 3 and one node (A) has degree 5. Euler proved that a circuit of the desired form (using each relation once, and return to the starting point) is possible if and only if there are no nodes of odd degree. Such a walk is since then called an Eulerian circuit or an Euler tour. Since the graph corresponding to Königsberg has four nodes of odd degree, it cannot have a so called ‘Eulerian circuit’.

In the history of mathematics, Euler’s solution of the Königsberg bridge problem is considered to be the first theorem of graph theory. In addition, Euler’s recognition that the key information was the number of bridges and the list of their endpoints (rather than their exact positions) presaged the development of topology.

Graph theory for one helps us to understand more about human society. For instance, it may be clear that todays networks maybe presented as graphs. Doing so helps us to make complex situations transparent and manageable. The two pictures beneath for example are exactly the same network; the first one is how we see networks in everydays life; the second one how we may order it using graph theory.

So, what we need in the architecture of our future, is a strong and simple way to make our society transparant. More about the way Euler’s graph theory may help us in later posts.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, society, networks, network architecture, Euler, mathematics, graph, graph theory , practosophy