Re: [projectvrm] Oxford University blocks Google Docs

["Mr. Jim Pasquale" < >]

When the cloud becomes your computer and endpoint devices use the cloud for peer to peer relationships, based on sovereign cloud identities. We'll truly have a LiveWeb.

+1 =Drummond 

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On Mar 10, 2013, at 7:42 PM, Drummond Reed < "> > wrote:

Jim, if it's of any help with your ambivalence about the "personal cloud" -- what you are talking about hosting on your Freedom Box in the configuration you describe IS your "personal cloud".

The way I interpret the term, the "cloud" is not just compute-space-for-rent on someone else's servers, but compute-space that exists anywhere on the net as a peer (meaning whatever we would conventionally called a server). As I understand it that's been the goal of the Freedom Box from the start -- to give you your own personal serve that's not under anyone else's control. Your own cow, not anyone's calf.

I know that at least one of the Respect Network architects -- Markus Sabadello -- has specifically been designing for personal cloud deployment on a Freedom box.

So, while it might present some short-term difficulties for you to periodically unplug and replug your Freedom-Box-based personal cloud, personal cloud infrastructure should definitely be designed to support that.

=Drummond 

On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 7:40 AM, Jim Bursch < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

I am inclined to believe that the only way that the VRM vision can be fully realized -- that we the people can have true, complete agency on the Net -- is to have and control our own piece of hardware that is the ultimate source of us on the Internet, and that we have the ultimate power of unplugging if/when we so desire. This of course describes the Freedom Box. When my Box is plugged in, I am on the Net. When my Box is not plugged in, only a ghost of me remains on the Net as degrading data on other people's servers.

Until we have that, I don't think  we will ever have any real power as individuals on the Net.

This is why I am ambivalent about the "personal cloud."

Jim Bursch
310-869-5340

 
 " target="_blank">
 
http://mymindshare.com
@jimbursch

On 3/9/2013 6:03 AM, Doc Searls wrote:

Thanks.

The VRM perspective is independence. 

To do anything substantive on the Net today, it's nearly impossible not to use personalized services inside corporate walled gardens such as Google Drive (aka Docs), Apple's iCloud and "social" systems such as Facebook and Twitter. But we also need personal capacities that are ours alone. These need to work in the world of connections that comprises the Net — just as our bodies and souls are ours alone, yet also work in human society.

Bruce Schneier compares these walled gardens to castles in a feudal system. <http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/feudal-security/> We are vassals within these systems. Our job with VRM is not to fight these systems, but to equip individuals with their own tools of independence and engagement, to make them the points of integration for their own data, and of origination for what gets done with it. Our agency — the power we have to act in the world — should not only be ours alone, but have real power in dealing with those who would otherwise control us.

I think there are two things we need to get that power, besides a larger box of VRM tools and services. One is substitutability of services. The other is true freedom of contract.

Substitutability means we have a choice, say, of intentcasting services, or of trust networks and personal cloud service providers, just as we have a choice of email service providers — or to self-host our own email. (And we can move our mail from one to another without loss.)

Freedom of contract means we don't always have to submit to the dominant parties in calf-cow ceremonies (e.g. clicking "accept" to one-sided terms). We can have automated processes within which both parties fully respect each other and come to agreements as equals.

Doc

On Mar 9, 2013, at 5:38 AM, Anjali Ramachandran < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

This is a very interesting article on how Oxford has had to block Google Docs due to repeated phishing attempts using GDocs URLs. They are now pressurising Google to step up response and security. I quote: "Google may not themselves be being evil, but their inaction is making it easier for others to conduct evil activities using Google-provided services."

http://blogs.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxcert/2013/02/18/google-blocks/

Relevant from a VRM perspective I thought.

Anjali

@anjali28

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