The cooperative movement is embodied by its cooperative associations active worldwide, at local, national and international levels. Cooperative associations have two main functions: to promote the cooperative model (to policy makers and the general public) and to stimulate innovation among their members (through the sharing and pooling of knowledge and resources).

In order to stimulate innovation and disseminate the cooperative model, cooperative associations run educational programs for entrepreneurs. Cooperatives Europe and the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) help their members to launch and consolidate such programs by stimulating the sharing of expertise and resources. Together with their members and stakeholders, they produce and share free open resources, consisting of methodologies and educational materials, to promote and support cooperative entrepreneurship in their respective territories.

Yet, current web solutions have done too little to make cooperative resources accessible to the general public. To communicate with their members and partners, cooperative associations rely on traditional solutions such as emailing and publishing on websites. Unfortunately, the algorithms of search engines, driven by the logic of profit generation, tend to favor commercial content intended for a large audience, to the detriment of targeted knowledge tools. Thus, content for cooperative entrepreneurs is marginalized from the dominant search engines.

It is time for the cooperative movement to emancipate itself from technologies that fundamentally discriminate against cooperative values and identities. Expecting Google to deliver cooperative resources is a losing battle. Instead, cooperative associations need to establish a web infrastructure that can connect cooperative actors directly to their stakeholders – without depending on their competitors. In other words, cooperation between cooperatives must be realized on the web.

The post #1 Interoperability for intercooperation appeared first on Startin'blox.

What can they do with my data?

As we’ve heard 20 times by now, Whatsapp does not collect any deeply private data about me. They can’t access my messages, which are safely encrypted from anyone but my smartphone. They do not keep track of my geolocation, although they know which IP I’m connected from.

What they do know is basically which device I’m using, what have I bought via the app and who I’m interacting with.

What can they do with that?

The truth is that nobody can really answer that question precisely. Knowing which pieces of data are responsible for what marketing magic down the line is a puzzle even the best data-scientists at Facebook would struggle to answer.

What we do know is that it makes it easier to “profile you”, that is to say predict who you are and what you want, so as to tweak their recommendation algorithms both for ads and content.

The positive side of this is that Facebook offers a more engaging experience. Facebook becomes better at showing you content that makes you interact with others via their services and those of their partners. They’ll show you ads that you like, or content that you either love or hate, and you’ll react to it, having social interactions with people and companies in the process.

The downside of it is that they become better at monetizing you. They can skew your information pipeline in a way that makes you more susceptible to being biased. They can make you spend more time or money on things that you would be better off without. It can generally make you more addicted to their apps.

The thing is… you’ll keep using Whatsapp

Tens of millions of users have installed Signal and Telegram over the past few weeks, so much so that it caused outages on their side. If you are reading this line, chances are you’re one of them.

Now the relevant question to ask yourself is: When is it that you will uninstall Whatsapp?

The answer to that question is not in this web. Let me explain it a bit.

Whatsapp has more than 2 billion daily active users. Let’s take a very unlikely hypothesis of 50 million users caring enough about this privacy policy update to uninstall Whatsapp and migrate ALL of their conversations on Signal. That’s 2.5% of Whatsapp’s user base. That means 97.5% of us will stay put, having our conversations on Whatsapp. And because 97.5% of conversations, especially group conversations are on Whatsapp, most Signal newscomers will stay on Whatsapp because of their work group, their family group or the ones on which they were planning their next holidays.

That’s called the network effect, that’s what makes Whatsapp so valuable to Facebook, and that’s why, even if it is a very bad PR move, they know they won’t lose you or their market dominance anytime soon. They are as close as it gets to being a monopoly.

Can we do something about it?

Of course we can! We need to stop storing our private data into private companies. That turns the biggest market player on the web into monopolies.

To work around the problem, our data needs to be stored outside of private companies so that several web players can access it, whereas today, only the biggest player can, only Whatsapp is hosting your family group.

Solid France is an association working on and promoting a new architecture for the web, collaborating with the W3C and the inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee.

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How tomorrow, the web will be different : A day in the Solid world

This article presents the future of the web by describing one of my probable future days :  A day in the Solid world. I hope it helps you understand the changes that are coming, measure how significant they are, and why we are convinced at Startin’blox that we are changing the world by working on it. Let’s start!

7h52 – Game is on! A day in the Solid world !

I wake up in a pretty low tech fashion, as I usually do not set an alarm clock. The body just switches ON when it’s fully charged. I like to start my day by reading the news, to get a feel of what is happening on Earth and beyond.

For years I read BBC news via their mobile application but thank God that’s long gone by now. Don’t get me wrong, BBC news is a great source of information but now, all the news agencies are interoperable. There exist dozens of news reading applications, most of them open source and financed by the newspapers themselves.

The one I’m using allows me to filter out articles that have been crowd rated as fake news or biased. Editorialization is crowd sourced, and allows me to find the best articles in the world for every single topic, sometimes a Medium blog post by a researcher, sometimes a small opposition newspaper of the local country, often still, a well respected newspaper which have remained the best media to cover geopolitical topics which I enjoy following.
The comments section, also moderated by the community, is often a useful source of complementary information.

Each news producer can reach a broader audience than before, and therefore monetization issues of the online press is almost a topic of the past, you just have to be relevant to your audience and they reward you for it.

8h46 – Hey, it seems I’ll see my girlfriend soon

My girlfriend lives in Lyon, and I was planning on visiting her next weekend, so I posted it on my SOcial LInked Data (SOLID) profile online. In 24 hours, the 3 transport companies I gave access to that data made me 15 offers. The most practical for me was the train departing at 11am this Friday. It fitted well with my agenda, I love the train because it is calm, reliable, wifi is good and I’m not very good with smalltalk.

However I strongly hesitated with the electric car sharing offer with two climbers on Friday afternoon. Being able to control my data and who has access to it allowed the transport companies I trust to know I’m in love with climbing and a staunch ecologist. I must admit meeting cool climbers for outdoor sessions is always attractive, and an electric car feels almost as good as the train regarding my carbon footprint. I passed for this time though: I have work to do but the offer was more than tempting.

9h15 – Katia seems pretty excited

I meet my roommate Katia in the corridor, she is heading to work, a big smile on her face. She is delighted to tell me that tonight, she is meeting for the first time this handsome guy that the latest dating app in town recommended to her. The previous dating app she was using ended up bothering her because they were also using her data to display targeted ads between swipes and she got tired of it, so she revoked its access to her data. .
The guy she is meeting tonight seems to have it all for Katia: they both practice yoga, he speaks both French and Russian fluently, he uses alternative medicine, they listen to the same songs, like the same movies, practice bachata and both share a passion for art and design.

I think I’d be freaked out by so many things in common with someone. As a matter of fact, dating apps never really worked for me anyway. Let’s see if it does for Katia or if the perfect date she envisions right now only exists in her mind. I can’t wait to hear how it went tomorrow morning in the corridor. She has just left for now, and I’ll start my working day. I work from home today.

10h30 – I only did my duty, Sir…

A client of mine calls me to renew the web app hosting and maintenance contract we have together. We said we’d call each other to sift through the few hiccups that happened over the past twelve months and ensure the coming year would run more smoothly. I was a bit nervous but all in all though, she seems happy with the service.

She is working for Coopératives Europe, a european association fostering inter cooperations between European cooperatives. She concludes that, since they were able to interconnect their members more seamlessly online via Solid, commercial activity within the federation has increased by 27%, and trust towards the federation has greatly increased. Members know they are fully autonomous, each have their own applications, workflows and practices, and can still interact and eventually contract with the other members of the federation online.

12h30 – Data is power

Lunch time with Sylvain, my all time partner. He seems to have had yet another short night. The guy can’t sleep for 2 weeks now, but he doesn’t talk to me about it, and I don’t ask. I think he knows I’m here to help if it is really serious, below that he doesn’t even bother mentioning it. Hopefully the storm will pass.

We meet to discuss the positions of the company regarding the current reforms the government is planning regarding freelancers representation and pensions. For a few years now, economical actors’ opinions have been taken into account. Each company references the URL of its server and its public key on a private blockchain launched by the government to guarantee the identity of the voters.

For each consultation, companies can then publish their position on their own server. That allows their customers and shareholders to have a public list of the positions taken by the company, and the state can collect opinions and votes about a given proposal while leaving the political discussion closer to those affected by it. Such processes were enacted a few years after the yellow vest movement blocked the country for several months, revealing a widening rift between the ruling class and the rest of the population. People still complain now, but at least we can govern and move forward, the “Macron is an asshole” excuse doesn’t hold anymore, plus the guy isn’t even in power now… It is harder to be against a political decision when you know most companies and citizens backed it directly. The legitimacy of the decisions is stronger this way, people feel more listened to.

16h45 – Data is health as well

I’m calling Sophie to know what is up with her leg. She tore her hamstring while we were surfing together a few weeks ago, and she was seeing the doctor again yesterday for a final round of exams to figure out if she needs surgery or not. Unfortunately, it turns out she does. Her tendon is totally detached from her pelvis, and it needs to be attached again if she wishes to run again like a gazelle. 

As she stores all her medical data on her SOLID data safe online, doctors were able to assess she had a high chance to be allergic to the general anaesthesia shot she was about to be given, based on the fact that both her parents are. They’ll use an alternative product then, and Sophie won’t throw up while waking up… Not a great victory but… better still.

20h00 –Time to eat! 

I check on my food app. It is run by a company that indexes all the food options in Paris from restaurants, cantines, homemade, bakeries, supermarkets, food trucks. My criterias are simple: eating vege for less than 8€. It seems that tonight, the local school canteen has some extra eggplant lasagna they’re giving away almost for free, and I’m buying!

20h45  –  Time to unwind – it was A day in the Solid world

It’s been a long day, and it is time to chill in front of a good documentary. Because my friends let me access their public streaming history – without porn basically – I could pick between “Men of Rock” and “the Social Dilemma” based on their recommendations. I went for geology today, and it makes me want to climb what I’m seeing…

I hope you enjoyed this ride into the future of the web. We are fairly close to such a healthy relation with technology. Interoperability of data to retain control over it is a big part of the path. Want to react or share your own vision? Feel free to contact me: alex@startinblox.com.

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On Thursday, November 19, 2020, Alexandre Bourlier presented the semantic web during the DataParty online at the Briqueterie, a coworking space in Marseille. this is your time to Understand the semantic web and its challenges in less than 30 minutes.

I’ve put together a little podcast to share this presentation that I found very enlightening.

Thanks La Brique! Thank you Alex!

Royalty free music : Tiny Spaceships by Hans Atom (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/hansatom/60364 Ft: Donnie Ozone

Merci La Brique! Merci Alex !

Musique libre de droit : Tiny Spaceships by Hans Atom (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/hansatom/60364 Ft: Donnie Ozone

The post Understand the semantic web appeared first on Startin'blox.

The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect—to help people work together―and not as a technical toy.

Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999

When you make a phone call, you don’t have to be concerned about the brand of the phone or the telecom provider of the person you are calling. In the same way, sending an email does not require us to worry about the recipient’s email address or email application. All these systems are interoperable, i.e., they are able to communicate with each other.

We consider the interoperability of these communication systems as a given, yet we do not expect interoperability when it comes to Web or mobile applications. Nobody seems surprised to be unable to send messages between WhatsApp and Telegram.

Today, our applications don’t talk to each other. The lack of interoperability has impacts on the Web and the digital economy in general, but also on organizations and their ability to coordinate and cooperate.

This is why Tim Berners-Lee launched the Solid (SOcial LInked Data) project in 2015. Concerned about the growing influence of a few global companies on access to information and personal data, Tim aims to rebuild the technical architecture of the Web based on the principles of decentralization and interoperability.

The Web of Data

To understand this revolution, we need to talk about the Web of Data, a W3C initiative meant to foster the publication of structured data on the Web and to avoid producing data silos that are isolated from each other. The goal of the Web of Data is to connect data, regardless of where it is stored, to form a universal information network.

It is the Semantic Web that enables this linking by providing data with definitions that allow machines to perform contextualized searches. The Semantic Web is based on a language called RDF (Resource Description Framework) which allows the relationships between data to be described in the form of triplets: subject – predicate – object. RDF can use several syntaxes such as XML or JsonLD to represent these relationships.

For example, Bob (subject) likes (predicate) cats (object). The data “Bob” and “cats” are linked together by a qualified relationship called a predicate. These data are themselves described by a web ontology that represents the concepts of “person” and “cat”. Web ontologies contextualize the data using a formal knowledge representation language called OWL, itself based on RDF. Ontologies can describe the set of concepts and relationships between concepts of an entire knowledge domain, for example, the domain of life sciences. It is also possible to create much more specific ontologies relating to a profession, an activity, or an organization.

Once this semantic contextualization of data is established, it is possible to delegate “intelligent” processing to machines, which can then perform logical operations such as inferences.

But data semantization is not everything. There are several implementations of RDF and many different standards, which hinders attempts to reach an international consensus on sensitive issues such as permissions management and authentication.

This is where the Solid project comes in.

The Solid Project

Solid was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 2015 at MIT, and it is now supported by a W3C working group. Solid is an API standard that facilitates interactions between applications based on semantic data. With Solid, it is no longer necessary to develop a specific API for each application in order to access its data, traditionally served by the application’s backend and kept under the control of the company operating it. Instead, users can store their data on “pods”, which are storage points that they control. They can decide where pods are located, move them where they want, and authorize applications to access them. Pods are data sources that are independent of application providers, who no longer need to own the data in order to provide their service.

WebIDs and Pods

WebID is a unique identifier associated with a person or organization. Anyone can host this identifier on their own identity server, or delegate this function to a third-party provider (“WebID provider”). Identity management is based on open standards (FOAF for people and social graphs, OpenID for authentication, Web Access Control for access rights) to maintain interoperability between users, data, and applications, and user independence from the identity provider.

The “pod” refers to the space where a user’s data associated with a WebID is stored, i.e., a person or an organization. Each person can select their pod and WebID providers. The pod provider can be the same as the WebID provider, or they can be distinct.

Taking Back Control of Your Data

The current model of the Web leads to the concentration of power in the hands of centralized actors who provide free services in return for access to our personal data, which they monetize. Google or Facebook, for example, now play the role of identity provider, not only for their own services but also for hundreds of third-party applications. These dominant players collect information about our social activity and our consumption of services and information, far beyond the services they offer themselves.

The intimate knowledge of each person that they gain is a form of extreme surveillance, which can and has been exploited for commercial and political purposes.

Another issue resulting from the loss of control of our own data is that of fragmentation, which we mentioned at the beginning of this article. Since our identity and our data are controlled by companies providing services, it is illusory to expect them to facilitate portability or interoperability with their competitors. For example, our Deezer playlist will be unusable on Spotify, our reputation as a driver will only be promoted at BlaBlaCar, and the social graph of our friends and acquaintances will remain the property of Facebook.

Finally, the hyper-concentration of web applications leads to a uniform user experience. Some applications are used by hundreds of millions, even billions of people, due to network effects favoring global monopolies. Freeing up access to data (while respecting people’s rights) would enable a burgeoning explosion of social and collaborative applications, with each community – and even each individual – able to have an interface adapted to their needs.

Solid is radically changing the architecture of Web applications in favor of the autonomy of individuals, who regain sole control of their identity and data. Far from being just a technical change, Solid could profoundly transform the digital economy to the detriment of models based on the massive exploitation of user data.

With Solid, the success of a project can no longer be based on capturing and retaining data in order to extract economic value. The challenge becomes the intelligent utilization of this data in order to provide a relevant service to a now emancipated user.

Solid and Organizations

It’s easy to imagine Solid’s emancipatory potential for individual users, consumers, and citizens, but what about organizations? Does the distributed web model proposed by Tim Berners-Lee also have virtues for companies? Can it help to enhance cooperation between them?

Let’s take the case of a large organization with branches in different regions or countries. In general, software solutions supporting collaboration between the different levels of the organization and with external parties are selected, developed, configured, and deployed centrally by the IT department. IT people must take into account a very large array of factors and engage in complex, lengthy, and often uncertain projects in order to satisfy the needs of their users. Meanwhile, people at the local level, on the edge of the organization, are hampered by unsuitable tools, or mobilize “shadow IT”, i.e., solutions that respond to local needs but increase silos and security risks.

Today, it is widely accepted that the performance and resilience of organizations depend on the autonomy granted to operational teams, capable of reacting rapidly to local demands and constraints. The modular enterprise model, for example, which gives teams, departments, or BUs a great deal of latitude in terms of action and decision-making, requires the decentralization of information and cooperation processes. Agility requires empowering every component of complex organizational systems. But then, how can the overall coherence of the organization be maintained?

Another profound transformation affecting organizations of all sizes relates to open innovation and cooperative and collaborative processes within ecosystems. The pooling of R&D between public and private sectors, synergies between corporates and start-ups, and cooperation within industrial sectors or supply chains are all areas where the centralization of information systems is counterproductive.

Finally, the so-called “sharing economy” is another area that should gain from decentralization and interoperability. The term covers very diverse and not always positive realities, from digital labor to work done by swarms of pseudo-self-employed workers. But it also names a deep transformation of the nature of work, and the transition from labor to work as described by Laetitia Vitaud in her latest book. The rapid growth of independent work goes hand in hand with new solidarities within workers’ collectives and networks, which can pool resources without sacrificing their members’ autonomy. Here too, traditional monolithic tools are unsuitable, and the need for interoperability between autonomous parties is obvious.

Solid sets the conditions for better coordination between peers, whether they are freelancers, collectives, agencies, or large companies. Data exchange is based on the flexible interoperability framework of the Web of Data, rather than on a rigid data schema and the standardization of applications.

Two French projects have taken up the challenge of bringing this vision into reality.

The Virtual Assembly is a non-profit ecosystem of actors who develop digital commons (open source tools, methods, and projects) based on the Semantic Web and Solid, available to everyone.

The Startin’blox cooperative offers an open-source solution to create Web applications by assembling Solid components, as simply as one can create a website with WordPress.

The first application based on the Startin’Blox framework, Hubl, showcases how it can improve interoperability between organizations and workers’ collectives. Hubl offers modules such as an instant messaging system, a job board, a profile directory, and so on. Each collective of freelancers can decide which modules they implement and which data they wish to share. It is now possible to interconnect collectives and freelancers within an ecosystem, without a platform dictating its rules to the participants or using its position to extract economic rent!

Like Web3 applications based on blockchain technology, Solid’s Distributed Web promotes the autonomy of individuals while heralding considerable potential for transformation within organizations and ecosystems.

Despite its current lack of visibility, its adoption could prove rapid thanks to a reliable technological base… and the response it provides to the obvious needs of many social and economic players.

– – –

This article was originally written by Alice Poggioli and Philippe Honigman and published on Hackernoon.

Thanks to Rémi Arnaud, Sylvain Le Bon, Guillaume Rouyer, and the Startin’Blox community for their contributions. Thanks to Kirstin Maulding for her precious help with the translation.

The post A Solid Future appeared first on Startin'blox.

Cooperative associations are fundamentally different from libraries and schools. Students go to school to access knowledge; cooperative associations come to entrepreneurs to share knowledge from other entrepreneurs. Consequently, Coopedia is not much about aggregating documentation on a cooperative association’s website: it aims to bring knowledge to communities of practice.

Today’s communication strategies are about attracting entrepreneurs to our websites. What about reversing the process? How about displaying a resource directly on the apps used by entrepreneurs to coordinate their communities and manage their business? How powerful would become a cooperative development resource shown at the right time to the right person? Although Coopedia is setting a first cornerstone, such a vision goes beyond the deployment and multiplication of decentralized knowledge bases.

Coopedia is based on Solid standards. Designed by the World Wide Web Consortium, Solid standards set the stage for a fair and decentralized web. Solid standards’s key added value is to make interoperability universal. When two systems are interoperable, they are able to exchange data. Today, interoperability enables you to compare flight ticket fares, and book a trip involving different airlines companies; it also enables Google Maps to indicate your next train departure and inform you about delays.
However, until now, making two systems become interoperable has been extremely expensive, and reserved to large players: this is why Google Maps suggests you Uber rather than your local taxi coop. Solid breaks the costs of interoperability: any Solid-based application can be interconnected with any other Solid-based application. No matter how rich or powerful you are, if interconnecting your system with a partner’s system is relevant, you can interconnect. Voilà.

Now, imagine the power of a Coopedia interconnected with its ecosystem of cooperative applications. Sarah and Mike just founded a freelancer cooperative: to manage their coop, they deployed a Solid-based cloud for sharing documents among their members. The model is successful, but the founders remain unsatisfied: they now want to foster innovation and empowerment within their coop.
In a matter of minutes, Sarah connected their cloud with Coopedia: she set filters so that only documents written in English, and addressing innovation within freelance coops would appear on their internal cloud. Now, by accessing their regular collaborative tools, freelancers see and access stimulating, up-to-date and relevant resources designed to stimulate collective creativity.

By using universal Solid standards, Coopedia web app aims to make data (and knowledge) flow well beyond current capabilities — and even imaginations. Untapping its full potential requires the creation of a wide ecosystem of interoperable apps, designed by people aware about the enormous potential of knowledge-sharing. Let’s build and connect!

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Interoperability for inter-cooperation #2 : The cooperative movement is a distributed network, comprising autonomous entities guided by common values and a sense of cooperation rather than competition. Uniformization would be irrelevant: autonomy and diversity enable cooperative organizations to meet the specificities of their own territories, thus ensuring efficiency and relevance of the cooperative movement. Cooperative associations thus needed a technology which would preserve their autonomy while enabling them to act as a flexible and powerful network.

Coopedia has been conceived as an overarching solution able to break data silos and help knowledge to flow among different organizations. It includes two key functions: indexing an organization’s resources (documents, videos, books…); facilitating the pooling of resources among organizations.

From a cooperative organization’s point of view, Coopedia is primarily a knowledge management web app. It offers to index resources of any format (text, video, audio…), support (virtual or physical), location (intranet, cloud, shelf) and language. The resource is identified with its URL (or physical location if relevant), and briefly described by the contributor. A classification system and a search engine allow the user to retrieve the resource through different search logics (start-up development stage, author, description…).

Coopedia is integrated to the website of a given organization. This website thus becomes an extranet for cooperative development resources: in addition to managing internal resources, it supports their dissemination. When indexing a resource, users may decide to keep it internal or available to a wider audience. In the latter case, the resource becomes visible on the organization’s website, and searchable by an anonymous visitor.

Last but not least, Coopedia is interoperable: an organization may pool its resources with another organization using Coopedia. In practice, when several Coopedia instances are interconnected, a user can search from a single interface resources hosted by partner servers. Filters help the user to navigate among such resources, while preventing overflow issues. Importantly, each Coopedia instance keeps full control over its own data: it enables to share some or all resources, with chosen partners — and all decisions may be reversed.

In a nutshell, Coopedia sets a cornerstone for building a cooperative web. With Coopedia, cooperatives become interoperable: their systems are able to communicate horizontally, without the need of human intervention or third-party inference. In other words, Coopedia’s interoperability increases cooperatives’ technological capability to cooperate with their peers.

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