This is a talk that I have been privileged to see some early drafts of its development. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the finished product. Nimisha Asthagiri joins Scott Davis to lay out the vision of Solid and Pods. It is a delightfully protopian vision, and one that is eminently in reach.

In this talk, Nimisha and Scott explore Tim Berners-Lee’s new vision for the Web – Solid and Pods – where user data is “at the beck and call of the users themselves… a future in which [web] programs work for you”. This is an alternative path where privacy and resiliency are at the heart of our system architectures. A path where the web’s pendulum swings back to decentralization. A path that leads to a fundamentally user-centric tech ecosystem.

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This question, it would seem, has been answered countless times on countless blogs, articles, conference talks, papers, etc. yet here I am, joining the throng to tilt at this windmill.

My understanding of REST has been evolving continuously over the past 15+ years. I continue to find new nuances, new applications, new patterns, and rediscover concepts that I once completely misunderstood. I have brilliant friends and mentors, but I’m an autodidact at heart and more often than not, they merely illuminate the path. As I’ve sought to navigate this life and the information space we call the web, I have learned being self-taught is fraught with peril.

The web is full of contradictions.

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