Platform costs, platform restrictions no longer needed – the project “mosaic”

Purpose

Finding people, selling things, finding exactly the courses I want – without internet platforms:

Knowledge exchange, finding people and groups with same interests, booking flights and beds, offering services, further education, and so on – all that without platforms, logins, costs, but straight forward and exactly the way I want it, while having all data much more under my control.

Description

Example one:

Everybody, who wants to find other people for a knowledge exchange about a topic, can compose an internet document that contains the relevant data in the form of xml, microformat or composed in a different well-defined way (what language to use for that is to decide, see below). Let’s show the mechanism using xml. Relevant data to find compatible people are: the topic, the languages I’m able to speak, the way I’d like to communicate, maybe the place where I live:

<xml>
<mosaic>
<knowledge_exchange>
<topic>energy autonomy of buildings</topic>
<description>I now several solutions to build buildings as energy producing units, but many questions are still open. I’d like to find out, which of them are going to be solved in the next three years and especially, which of them will not be solved as soon, so we can put more energy towards them</description>
<languages>german, french, english</languages>
<ways_of_communication>phone, email, web chat, meeting</ways_of_communication>
<place>switzerland</place>
<contact><email>exmample@mysite.ch</email><phone>+41123456789</phone></contact>
</mosaic>
</xml>

Finally, I place this document somewhere on the internet, where the search engines will find it.

Now we assume that the existing search services or new specialized search services indexes this document using the xml tags. So everybody can find this document be searching for a word in the topic-field, combined with a language in the language-field and a given area of places (maybe Europe – the search engine knows, which coordinates are within Europe). So other people interested in the same topic, matching my given languages and my given place can find and contact me.

Example two:

The same system works for selling beds in a hostel. You would issue an internet document for every free bed, containing all relevant information, including the exact geographical coordinates, price and a direct link allowing to book this exact bed using your own shop-system on your web site. (Here you could check if the bed really is free, in case the index of the used search engine wasn’t up-to-date.)

Conclusion:

In fact: finding people and offering rooms in a hostel works without a platform. The same system works for offering services, further education and any thing you might imagine.

So, this could really be the internet 3.1 because of those points:

• Nobody ever will really «see» those internet files like normally we see internet files through our browsers.

• Those files will only be read by search engines and appear as search results in a layout, that is built by the search engine: In case of a search for knowledge exchange on top those who match all criteria, then those, that match best the topic I look for and the languages but not the way of communication and so on. Better search engines will give me a button to change the order using other criteria first. In case of a hostel bed, I would see only the beds within the given geographic field, in order of prices – including a small preview of a photo, if available, and with a button to change the order. (This is, why the idea’s name is «mosaic»: everybody issues a small piece, that is composed to a big image by a search engine.)

• The internet is used as a database. Each database entry is one file everywhere in the internet.

• The search engines are the query handlers to this integral, total-data database.

• The peer to peer quality of the internet is «really realized», not controlled by platforms.

Goals

• getting rid of restrictions and cost of platforms for user and costs for sellers

• realizing democratic principles

• getting maximal control of the own data

• connecting people with similar interests or buyers and compatible sellers and vice versa and so on, independently of the fact, if a fitting platform exists or not.

To Do / Next Steps

• defining the tag system / the language (xml or microformat or …): must be clear, determinate and extensible – contact w3 consortium

• short feasibility study

• coding an open source search engine specialized in indexing documents using that tag system

• go live with a first purpose – maybe sell and buy, maybe finding people, maybe …

• or: find out about other steps

Problems

• What about the rating of hostels, products and so on? – Maybe, the specialized search engines can provide form for feedback and generate special files as rating entries to this all inclusive database that can be read by all search engines

• What about rapidly changing content like free seats in a plane? – Maybe the search engines can check if the indexed files have been changed since, while composing an answer to a request.

• There will be many more problems but also many ways to solve them.

Extensions

• This database can be a mail system, if you encrypt the content of the massage and give a kind of sign allowing the receiver to recognize the file as a mail for them.

• Even complex social media interaction as it is performed now by Facebook®, Xing® and so on, can be realized within this total database, building a file for each message/post and using encryption, if the content is for some people only.

• As not everybody is able to compose such internet files by hand and not everybody has a server to upload them, there will be services providing forms specialized on a type of entry (like type «knowledge exchange») including the service to upload the immediately generated file to the internet. (Maybe the specialized search engines will allow a searcher to transform a search into a file, if no matches are found: If you cannot find others, you can give others the opportunity to find you.)

• …

November the 5th, 2014, Christof Arn
christof.arn@ethikprojekte.ch
version 1.0

PS: I’d like to talk about this idea – and even more, to realize it. If this is not the appropriate place to do so, please let me know – if this is the right place, let me know what you think about this idea.