This talk is about Solid and our digital footprint. It will walk through the conceptual underpinnings of Solid, its socio-technical implications and a couple of possible and plausible future Solid might hold for libraries.

1. SLA Europe Presents
Solid: An Ecology of Digital Being
With Teodora Petkova
Wednesday
28 October, 2020
18:00 GMT
www.sla-
europe.org

2. This webinar is being recorded and will be posted to
the SLA Europe website for later viewing.
Microphones have been muted for this event.
Please ask questions and make comments on our
Padlet – link is in the chat.
www.sla-
europe.org

3. www.sla-
europe.org

4. Teodora Petkova is a philologist fascinated by the
metamorphoses of text on the Web. Very much in love with
the Semantic Web, she explores how our networked lives
transform (and are transformed by) the expanding
possibilities of the written word.
With an educational background in Classical Studies and
Creative Writing, currently Teodora digs deep into words and
concepts as part of her PhD studies. More specifically, her
research is looking at the ways the Web is changing
marketing communications and bringing us ever closer to
walking the talk of dialogism.
www.sla-
europe.org

5. Solid: An Ecology of
Digital Being
Teodora Petkova

6. Solid: Instead of a
Prologue
1. Flows. [From Big Data to Linked
Data - from Deluges to Wells - cf.
LOD]
1. Naming. Are you on the Web?
1. Alone & Together (But still
linked)

7. Contents
What is Solid?
● Technical view
● Conceptual view
● Latin punk view :)
What can you do with Solid,
theoretically?
● Own your data
● Assign access control to
it
● Get relevant data from
third-party services
What can you do with Solid, in
practice?
● Get a WebID
● Play
● Let’s Imagine

8. What is Solid?
Technical view Conceptual view
Latin punk version (quantumly
leaping into Otlet’s model of the
world of information)
What else?
Give me your ideas about what
can you do with a personal pod
(full of your data) which you can
link to anything else?

9. RDF
The glue that holds
together the traditional
document Web is the
hypertext links between
HTML pages. The glue
of the data web is RDF
links. An RDF link
simply states that one
piece of data has some
kind of relationship to
another piece of data.
Linked Data - a recipe for
publishing data on the Web in a
consistent, machine-readable
way [Richard Wallis]
In action: Linked Data Jazz
Technical view

10. URI
"Cyclops, you asked my
noble name, and I will tell
it; but do you give the
stranger's gift, just as you
promised. My name is
Nobody. Nobody I am
called by mother, father,
and by all my comrades."
Resource Description Framework
(RDF) is based on the idea of
identifying things using Web
identifiers or HTTP URIs and
describing resources in terms of
simple properties and property
values. See also RDF 1.1 Concept
and Abstract Syntax
Solid: You GOT a label!
Naming on the Web:
https://teodora.inrupt.net/profil
e/card#me
Technical view

11. The mindful
presence of a
Netizen
● Why having
Alexandria’s library
and millions of
personal libraries
linked to it?
● Why tidying up your
digital footprint
● Why caring about the
Web as a knowledge
repositorium
Conceptual view

12. Study. Secluded.
Privacy.
Latin (instead of cyber) Punk
View

13. Study. Sharing.
Public.
Otlet’s Mundaneum
"The Semantic Web is rather Otlet-
ish”, maintains Michael
Buckland,professor at the School of
Information at the University of
California,Berkeley." ref.
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-
01455269/document
Latin punk and Otlet

14. What can you do with
Solid? Theoretically.
Store your data [A
home for your
data]
Manage your cyber
you and get
relevant products,
services,
information with
less friction (and
greater privacy)
Share it with
different
permissions
With the Flanders
government for
example :) Or your
Bank, or your TV
(ref. BBC)

15. What can you
do with Solid
In practice
Create a pod
https://solidproject.org/use-
solid/#get-a-pod-and-a-webid
Upload your photo
Add people
Create files
Graph yourself :)
With this cute service Visual
RDF:
http://cltl.nl/visualrdf/?url=http:
//cltl.nl/visualrdf/
Chat with me :) and several
other people
Some SOLID APPS:
https://ohmypod.netlify.app/wel
come
https://ohmypod.netlify.app/frie
ndlist - Different ways of adding
people.

16. What can you
do with Solid
In practice (2)
Join the Solid chat (where
developers, and yay, content
people can talk or just lurk a bit
to see what’s going on)
https://gitter.im/solid/chat
Read about it:
https://www.csail.mit.edu/rese
arch/solid-social-linked-data
Contribute:
https://solid.mit.edu/#involved
Create and account (just do it :):
Inrupt.net
solidcommunity.net

17. Let’s imagine! Google (What data would it pick?)
Pods (the future is made of small
knowledge graphs)
Other data (Your library?)
The LOD cloud (https://lod-
cloud.net/ )

18. Thank you!
I will see you around the Web! Please check the resources in the comments
of each slide (including this one :))
@TheodoraPetkova
www.teodorapetkova.com

19. Q&A
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europe.org

20. Thank you for joining us.
You can visit us online at
www.sla-europe.org
www.sla-
europe.org