Re: [projectvrm] Wired article on Indie Box… Ownership vs Outcomes

[Doc Searls < >]

Jim, while not a huge deal, I do think deleting Johannes contribution from the below is a mistake. (I also don't know what "he not interested in herding what his entrance barrios are likely to be".)

No market starts with a vast majority. You need early adopters.

"Technology trends start with technologists," Marc Andreessen says. And he's right. 

ProjectVRM is a *development* project. We're here to encourage that.

Like Nathan and others here, I like and value Graham's input on marketing. He's clearly one of the world's leading experts on that, and on related business topics. Meanwhile Brian and others here are among the world's leading experts on development. Most of the websites you visit every day run on Apache. Tip your hat toward Brian and his colleagues for that one. And consider how many $trillions in economic activity Apache supports.

It matters that the Net, the Web and email are all made possible by protocols not invented for commercial purposes, or with markets in mind at all. Like so much else on which we have all come to depend, they started with geeks wanting to "scratch their ow itch." That's what Johannes is doing with Indie Box. It's also why he's getting support for it.

There is an appetite in the market for independence, sovereignty and privacy. We can't get that from renting in others clouds. What we get is good for lots of things, but not those. And the market is not small, not just geeks, and not trivial.

We are here to encourage development, and I'd like Johannes — and everybody developing anything VRM-related — to get help and encouragement from this list.

Back to Brian:

Doc recently shared a Cory Doctorow essay that discussed this debate, which he framed as a coming civil war between *users* and *owners* of technologies and platforms:

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

Questions like what should be one's rights as a user, even when against the purely property rights of the owner, are what the war will be fought over.  The copyright and general computing wars are just initial skirmishes.

The civil war is over general purpose platforms. Johannes' Indie Box is one of those. (So is Customer Commons' Omie tablet.) I think the Indie Box may become a leader in the category, especially if it gets a groundswell of support.

Tough questions help, of course. But bear in mind, again, that we're mainly about development here.

Doc

(on a tethered phone with a bad connection in a London hotel where the Internet has been down all day)

On May 13, 2014, at 11:28 PM, James Pasquale < "> > wrote:

And the vast majority of people with buying power don’t know any languages have no interest in learning one, unless your in tech all you want is for the dam thing to work, look cool and do what you want it when you do.  Until the cable providers started setting the time, how many flashing time displays do you see in people’s homes…

just saying.

P.S. I’ve deleted Johannes from the thread as interesting as the conversation is, he not interested in herding what his entrance barrios are likely to be.  And that’s too bad for all of us!

On May 13, 2014, at 5:19 PM, sylvain willart < "> > wrote:

I haven't any idea where to start from. The only computer languages I know are R and SAS...

(BTW, among the software I put on my box are Agora Project and Zotero, for work collaboration, they're pretty cool)

2014-05-13 23:03 GMT+02:00 Johannes Ernst < " target="_blank"> >:

Thanks, Sylvain, these are beautiful examples for where VRM meets Indie Box.

Let's build them all, shall we? Who's in? ;-)

On May 13, 2014, at 13:59, sylvain willart < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

>> But actually, there is still one thing missing: make some of the stored data serchable from the net (like a resume, a selection of pictures, or even perhaps an anonymous description of my flat in order not to have to rely on AirBnB, and why not a network of my friend's Indie Boxes...)
>Tell me more about this, please?

with great pleasure,

- My resume is one three or more websites. Mine, my university's, IDEAS, HAL (and some I have forgotten). It's not a big one (I work hard to pump it up), but I would like to be able to update all of them at once.
- I rent my flat on three differents websites (AirBnB, 9 flats, Only appartments). The problem is that I have to  (try to) manage three differents schedules. Those "sharing economy" websites tend to look just like another bunch of silos to me... I would like to have a description of my flat and just one calendar on my box that would be searchable from the Internet (but of course, none other personal data would appear).

- I don't have a car. So I rent one to other people when I want to hit the road (that one may look strange for US viewpoint, but it's actually a booming practice in France, many websites offer car owners the possibility to put their car on rent for a day, sometimes an hour). But I am sure many people put their cars on different websites and have the same problem.

- I would like to be able to send messages, status updates, and links to my friends (I gave up on Facebook); and pieces of litterature and ongoing work to my colleagues. If they had such boxes, we could save the hassle of multiple emails, or avoid the not-so-good, and not private, google docs interface.

these are the few things who come to my mind. And I didn't start to think of the IoT implications (maybe cause I don't own actual connected object... yet), nor Rifkin's personal energy market.

S

2014-05-13 22:46 GMT+02:00 Johannes Ernst < " target="_blank"> >:

On May 13, 2014, at 13:44, sylvain willart < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

> But actually, there is still one thing missing: make some of the stored data serchable from the net (like a resume, a selection of pictures, or even perhaps an anonymous description of my flat in order not to have to rely on AirBnB, and why not a network of my friend's Indie Boxes...)

Tell me more about this, please?

Thanks,


Johannes.