[GNU/consensus] RFC: A user's perspective

[hellekin (GNU Consensus)]

This article is adapted from [1], published two years ago, and posted to
the GNU social-discuss mailing list, but that didn't receive much
attention. I believe most of it is still current. I made some inline
updates.

RFC means "Request For Comments". We all know that term. Let's use it
wisely, and constructively in our correspondence! Mailman supports
"topics": I could add one for that.

*

This text follows a brainstorming session that occurred yesterday at a
park nearby in Amsterdam, with elinvi and psy, from lorea.cc.

It aims to provide a non-technical view of an idealized GNU Social
application from the point of view of a sample user, in order to broaden
the reflexion on GNU Social beyond self-promotion of various projects,
and out of a purely technical scope.

== Universal Access ==

=== Device Independent ===

My account should be accessible via any device I happen to use: my
personal computer, a public (insecure) computer, a telephone, etc.

=== Platform Independent ===

Whether it is from a GNU/Linux OS, an Android, a Mac OS or a Windows, I
should be able to access my account.

=== Trust-Based Access Restrictions ===

When I'm using my personal computer, I expect to have the optimal
security features: I know that I'm not spying on my own keystrokes, that
I have my personal GPG key or SSL certificate locally and I can trust
them. Hence, in that case, I get full access to all my functionalities
and data.

But if I'm connecting from a public computer, I cannot give it the same
trust: I'm not using my secret keys there, nor do I know if the computer
is logging my keystrokes. In that case, I expect the application to ask
me for a password, or an out-of-band challenge to grant me potentially
harmful functionality (changing password) or data (whole contact list,
personal history, etc.).

In that case, I expect the application to grant me a one-time access to
the account, maybe using OTP or similar one-time authentication
mechanism, that would at least ensure backward and forward secrecy for
that account.

=== Offline Mode ===

I want to be able to use my account even disconnected from the Internet.
 I still would like to prepare messages, organize data, that I would
push later to the network, upon connection.


== Seamless Data ==

=== Local & Remote Are Obsolete ===

I don't want to "synchronize" my bookmarks. Instead, I want to access
them all at once, from Delicious or from my local browser, from my FTP
server and that other app where I share bookmarks with my friends.

I don't want to "upload" or "download" files. Instead, I want to be able
to select files on my local computer and drag'n'drop them to my chat
window so that a torrent is automagically created and shared among that
group.

Update: I also want that my "image folder" show me images from different
sources, in the same way as explained above for bookmarks. The bottom
line is: ignore location when you can, focus on the contents.

=== Raw Data vs. File Formats ===

People don't care about the file format, it's a techie issue. What we
want is seamless integration of raw data. If I stumble upon a text
online, I want to be able to select part of it, include it in some "box"
and share that box with others. For example, that could take the form of
an RDF description of all the sources used to compose that new document.
But at this point, from the user perspective, the technical
implementation doesn't make sense.

That approach breaks free from a paradigm that has been dominating the
computing world so far, that exposes the data type, and especially the
file format, which is completely irrelevant to the user: she doesn't
deal with MP3 or OGG, with JPEG or PNG, with MKV or DIVX, but with
sound, images and video.

I think the current approach to exposing technical details to the user
inherits from the legacy of proprietary software, where a proprietary
format appears as a brand, a differentiator on the market. When dealing
with free software, the file format is only a technical fact/constraint,
and does not bring any value-added to the user.

== Seamless Contact List ==

=== Protocol Independent ===

When I want to send a message to my Mom, I don't care if she's using
Facebook or XMPP or IRC or email or her phone. Although it might make
sense technically to know what service is used, the user just doesn't
want to know. The application should hide all that and provide a
seamless contact list.

=== Support Free ===

So, if I have "Mom" in my contact list, she would have an email account,
an XMPP account and a phone number. Even a snail mail address could
work, provided the application is hooked up to a postal mail delivery
service.

Imagine I want to send her a message on that video I made last evening.
It comes with a comment, and the video file attached. When I hit "send",
the system can match my preferences for that contact (rather xmpp than
sms, rather html mail than text, etc.), the perceived urgency for that
message (it's urgent, I need her to approve it before i can propagate it
to the rest of the family), and according to my contact's delivery
settings (as I'm her son, my messages are doubled to email and SMS, but
as she's hiking in the mountains, only email delivery is available at
that point).

And the message is sent through the different media, according to simple
rules: the message being too long for SMS, the title is sent along with
a link to the rest of the message, including the video. The email
receives the whole thing, except the video, 240MB, is not attached, but
linked. Etc.

=== Synchronous And Asynchronous ===

My contact list should cover both synchronous (e.g. chat) and
asynchronous (e.g. email) contacts, with easy merge capability (the
machine might not know how to recognize Hellekin from HK or HOW or
Hellekin O. Wolf, but the user will know and make the link. So, the
contact list would include a unique identifier across the network[1],
the different associated endpoints (online services, IRC, XMPP, PSYC,
email, phone, etc) including sending/receiving rules for that contact,
with sensible defaults (huge attachments stripped from emails, no
attachment to the phone, "preferred" mean of contact, etc.)

[1] unique identifier: what PSYC calls the Uniform Name Identifier (AKA
UNI, or Uniform), which is technically an URI. Name sounds less
pejorative to humans than resource.  It follows the URI spec.

Update: the Network Effect Alliance, and others, propose to use a global
identifier in the form "address@hidden". That seems like an interesting
debate to have.

=== Fine-Grained Preferences ===

As I can also act as a recipient of any contact, I can set preferences:
 I know that this bloke, whatever you tell him, will send you HTML
email.  Thanks to the stupid IT policy in his company, he cannot change
this setting.  It's for the image of the company, you know:  pretty
headers and lengthy disclaimers.  And it helps track exchanges.  So,
well, I can divert it to my HTML interface reader, the ubiquitous web
browser, strip out all the blipvert and keep only what matters: my
interlocutor's message.

For each contact I can apply receiving and sending preferences: from
routing and content filters, to logs and backup policies. Decrypt,
cleanup, process, store, link messages; select persona, trust and
security levels for interaction; targeted filters: delete all the
attachments over 10M for this contact after 1 week, etc.  The usual
email processing stuff.


== I Are Many: Identity, or the Contextual Internet Selves ==

Twitter lists point with reason the multiplicity of "I", still too often
perceived as one and unique.  Seeing self through another's eye reveals
some of the many facets of one's "identity".  So, I should be able to
use that multiplicity to create heteronyms, in the same way OpenID does:
allowing one to split different worlds, creating more focused contexts
with richer meaning.  Maintaining a Home and Work pair of persona makes
sense for most people in our society, although it was not always the case.

That goes beyond grouping contacts:  as I turn myself into Winston
Smith, I give no trust to anyone but Julia, and all of a sudden, my
workspace becomes uncluttered with the noisy propaganda of the IngSoc.
Urgency becomes a matter of choice: by assuming an identity, I put the
"no disturb" sign on my door.  I still can receive chosen alerts, but
otherwise, I can focus on what I'm doing.  What about having two
personalities active at the same time?  Schizophrenia to the people!


== Memory, Intimacy, Privacy ==

=== The Social Network as Extended Memory ===

Within the vision of McLuhan that tools are extensions of the human
(e.g. a hammer is an extension of the hand, a shoe an extension of the
foot), and John Licklider's (and others) view of the computer as a
mind-amplifier tool, we can consider the computer as an extension of the
mind. It helps us keep track of a lot of details that our memory would
filter out, such as precise dates, re-occurrences of events, etc.

One of the most private things is memory. Humans have a right to keep
that to themselves, and in fact, what's on your mind is inaccessible to
anyone else unless you chose to share it.

The explosion of social networking makes available a lot of that to
other people, including services that you're using to distribute your
private data to your friends. Until now, the drive to share has got the
priority over the drive to keep things private: the tools provided makes
it easy to share, and most social networking services rely on the
possibility to aggregate data and filter it to expose patterns, and
create detailed profiles of a person's behavior, that has a lot of value
for marketers (and intelligence agencies).

=== The Right To, and Necessity of Intimacy ===

Most people don't care too much about privacy, as they're told that if
they don't do anything wrong, they don't have anything to fear or hide,
and that if you have something to hide, it's probably because it's
wrong. Of course, this is a fallacious argument. If you look at it
closely, you'll find out that the people promoting transparency of your
data are the first ones to use secrecy. Transparency of public and
market data is important, respectively, for democracy and fair
competition. But opacity of private data not only protects the citizens
from abusive governments, but also proceed from a natural need for
privacy and intimacy (think about toilets.)

=== Building Memory for the Future ===

When you don't have control over your data, you take the risk of losing
your intimacy, as well as your memory. The time passed in front of a
computer, or online, is growing. It's important to realize that for
many, sharing that intimacy online also builds their memory for the
future, to share with their grand-kids...

That aspect of social networking, that you open the intimacy of your
mind to others, should be emphasized.

[1]
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Hellekin/A_User_Perspective_Of_GNU_Social

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