DWeb Camp attendees

Author: JIANG

Summary

DWeb Camp has a unique cultural slogan: JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out). Contrary to the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) culture, in such a rich and diverse event, while getting interesting things, it is inevitable to miss other wonderful things, and regard such misses as part of the fun and enjoy the moment.

This year, I came to San Francisco again across the ocean to participate in DWeb Camp activities. DWeb is Decentralized Web, mainly about decentralized network technology. This community has a long history and has intersections with open source software communities, cypherpunk waves, and countercultural movements. The organizer Internet Archive (Internet Archive) is a digital archive organization located in San Francisco. It has preserved snapshots of most public websites on the Internet since 1996. It has a mission of recording and storing all human knowledge and is highly respected in the technical community. .

I also came to the DWeb conference a few years ago. At that time in downtown San Francisco, the conference was not large, but it gathered Vint Cerf (TCP/IP protocol designer, father of the Internet, Turing Award winner), Tim Berners-Lee ( The father of World Wide Web, winner of Turing Award), Whitfield Diffie (master of cryptography, winner of Turing Award), Joseph Poon (founder of Lightning Network), Juan Benet (founder of IPFS & Filecoin), can be described as shining stars.

This year’s event is a camping event at Camp Naro in Northern California. We were in a huge sequoia forest, with towering and straight redwood trees ranging from ten to tens of meters everywhere, which was very spectacular. We were all immersed in such a native natural environment and discussed various issues. I also paid attention to a lot of art, culture and social topics, but after I came, I didn’t want to leave as soon as I got to the technical lectures, and I just came to my happy hometown. The supply of food is also plentiful, the food is healthy and delicious, and I have not stopped eating while chatting for three days. The first time I went camping, I was not well prepared. As a result, I didn’t buy a lot of things that I needed, and most of the things I bought were useless. The scene was all dependent on the help of my friends.

(towering redwoods)

The hottest technologies in this DWeb Camp are OCap, CRDT and Gossip. OCap (Object Capability), an object-based permission management model, has composability, transferability and powerful expressiveness, allowing fine-grained permission control. It is also one of my favorite programming concepts, and the common RBAC The /ABAC mechanism does not have this flexibility. Two well-known systems, Deno and seL4, use OCap.

The recently emerged UCAN (User-Controlled Authorization Network) is based on OCap, which expresses user authorization to resources through digital signature Capability, as a decentralized rights management solution, and has good compatibility and compatibility with existing Web standards. Interoperability, which was mentioned many times in this conference, sees the dawn of large-scale application.

Chatting with Dan, the founder of MetaMask, they also adopted OCap’s related technologies in terms of wallet security, and developed Lava Moat to ensure the security of the software supply chain. That is, when each Java dependency package is introduced, the white list is used to declare what resources the package is allowed to access, so as to avoid introducing malicious packages from affecting the overall security.

CRDT is a conflict-free replicated data type (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type), and it is also a very popular research field. When data is distributed in a decentralized manner, the cost of data synchronization or consensus is very high. What is still being explored is how to achieve as many functions as possible and express richer semantics without consensus, such as Realize content publishing, social networking, and collaborative editing without relying on centralized nodes or blockchains. This time I met Mark, the author of GUN DB, Michael, the author of Braid, and Matt, the author of vlcn. They have done a lot of work, and I am very excited to see the rapid development of this field.

Gossip is a gossip algorithm. It is a very important algorithm to disseminate information in a decentralized, random, and unknown-scale network structure and maintain the liveness of the network. There are also many discussions this time. I made a technical sharing about the performance bottleneck of the Gossip algorithm, as well as the optimization of the Scuttleutt and EBT algorithms. Similar algorithms Secure Scuttleutt and IPNS are both in use. I communicated with Professor Chris from the University of Basel in Switzerland, who is exploring the information dissemination of Bluetooth communication, and we shared some important ideas with each other.

In addition to the network aspect, this time there is also a sub-venue sponsored by OpenAI to discuss the security, social impact and regulatory issues of AI technology. With the emergence of ChatGPT, the impact of AI cannot be ignored. AI researcher Aza made a very wonderful sharing about how to use ML algorithm to analyze animal language and explore cross-species communication. NLP technology not only allows us to analyze language, but also helps us understand the structure of language and the commonality between different languages. These analytical tools can be extended to the language of animals to understand their communication patterns, such as deciphering the language of whales. Whales not only have their own language but also their own “popular culture”. Their own songs will be transmitted to each other and spread thousands of kilometers away. Aza jokingly called it “whale wide web”. There are a large number of problems to be studied here, and AI algorithms will play a very important role. Another lecture by Aza is AI Dilemma, about the social problems that AGI may bring, and how this new power will be captured by capitalism and super-hegemony. Especially after we have experienced the script of social media being monopolized by platforms, and now social media and attention economy permeate all aspects of society, and its impact cannot be isolated. At this juncture of historical choice, will human beings repeat the same mistakes? Aza said his two lectures, one on Hope and one on Fear, were a sort of hedge.

There are also a lot of poetry, music, hand-made, dance, yoga, and Tai Chi activities in this Camp, which embodies humanistic care everywhere. Many people come with their partners and children and it turns into a family outing. There are also many middle-aged and elderly people, many of whom are early Internet participants and pioneers, and the age span of participants is very large. Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, is also here this time. He has in-depth exchanges with many people, listens to sharing, and asks questions very carefully. The old man is still learning. There is also an excellent team of classical music volunteers who play the violin and play in every gathering. The wonderful music echoes in the forest and brings us great pleasure. The level is not inferior to that of a formal symphony orchestra, let alone In such a beautiful environment, it is like the sound of nature. One night the activity was to go to the mountains to watch the stars, but the weather was not beautiful and it was a cloudy day. The orchestra improvised, we lay on the lawn, closed our eyes, and it turned into a nightly concert, intoxicating.

(happy camp)

Some friends who came to the conference found that the blockchain and cryptocurrency are generally skeptical and critical, which actually provides another perspective on the future of the Internet. He randomly asked some developers what they think of blockchain, and I was listening in. Jackson, the developer of Solid, said that there are too many bubbles in the blockchain field, which affects people’s understanding of decentralized technology; ICO itself is immoral and does not protect ordinary people, causing a lot of damage. And in many cases web3 is not the best solution. Not everything needs to be chained, requires consensus, and needs financialization. It is only a part of the blueprint of the entire technical architecture. What he said also caused us to reflect on how to enhance the utility of Web3, how to solve people’s real problems, what needs to be chained and what not. While we were chatting, Mr. Tim Bernes-Lee walked to a nearby piano and played it as if no one else was around, becoming our accompaniment and intoxicated by himself. A person who helped connect the world and shared this technology with the world for free, is still shouting for the future of the Internet, fighting alone, immersed in a dream that has lasted for decades.

After the Camp ended, I participated in an online meeting of the CRDT community. Many people also shared their experience of attending the meeting, saying that there is rarely a place where it is so easy to say hi. Seeing other people doing similar things, I feel more Lots of allies. Some people say We see the same mountain, but climb in different ways (we see the same mountain, but climb in different ways). This is the impressive thing about the DWeb community, it’s a common community where everyone learns from each other. Listening is just as important as sharing, without having to “perform” or grab everyone’s attention. Even if you focus on a small technology (such as OCap, ActivityPub), there are people here to discuss with you, and you will find that you are not alone.

While chatting with Doc Searls at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center, I shared a long-standing niche idea of mine called User Side Intelligence. When using Internet services, although those recommendation algorithms and applications provide me with information and services, they are not necessarily for my purpose. For example, YouTube recommends videos, which make me want to watch, want to watch, and think again. The core is still service Because of the platform, it grabs my attention, makes me consume and indulge, and its boss is still the platform. A product or service will generate user side value (User Side Value) and platform side value (Platform Side Value), which are often inconsistent. I hope to have a form of software or intelligent body, maybe a browser plug-in, that can represent my values, communicate with different platforms, services and data sources, and comprehensively recommend content to me so that it meets my needs, which is equivalent to my agent. This User Side Intelligence must be aimed at my value, and I can also provide it with personalized data to follow the development of my personal life. My idea is also similar to the Customer Commons made by Doc.

(Fireside chat with internet pioneers, with Tim Bernes-Lee in the middle)

DWeb Camp focuses on people and the impact of technology on people. We are working on a decentralized social protocol Social Layer, emphasizing Subjectivity, that is, human subjectivity. Social here is not about social networking in the sense of Web2, but about how people trust and collaborate. People must be placed at the center, people are both active subjects and recipients of technological influence. On the one hand, it is necessary to broaden the boundaries of technology, and on the other hand, to explore how technology can serve people. The exploration of Social Layer will not be limited to Web3, but also Web2, DWeb and offline life, and openness, collaboration, and people-centered are the constant keywords. Social Layer also refers to the social level. For Web3, there are many aspects. Data Layer and Incentive Layer are important, and Social Layer is also important, but it is far from being explored.

DWeb Camp has a unique cultural slogan: JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out). Contrary to the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) culture, in such a rich and diverse event, while getting interesting things, it is inevitable to miss other wonderful things, and regard such misses as part of the fun and enjoy the moment. The agenda is also very loose and more comfortable, making people not feel consumed by social interaction.

The core theme of this DWeb Camp is Tomorrow, where Internet pioneers, current builders, future innovators, and children are gathered here to imagine the future of the Internet together, through technological innovation, as well as our unity and wisdom, Can the existing problems be fixed? At the closing ceremony, a pair of brothers aged nine and thirteen read poetry aloud on stage and shared their vision of Tomorrow, which included issues of social inequality, climate warming, and the impact of AI. So can we create a better internet and promise ourselves a better future?