Marc's Voice

Dashboard containers and a distributed architecture

I received this comment on my post on fiber optic connectivity from Michael Flynn of the Global Mandala project:

Marc, this is a great article. I’m looking forward to exploring ways in which the Global Mandala Project might be able to work with your vision of Citizen Dashboards, not just as part of our giving portal but also as a tool to provide a monetizable purpose to social networking. I wonder if the shared servers you refer to might not be mobile servers aka smartphones? Could a peer to peer web of servers based on a distributed architecture of mobile phones be a possible wireless network? the problem I see with the open network concept is the UI you engage with it through when every individual entity wants to protect its brand? Your thoughts?

Let me answer Michael’s questions, one at a time:

1.   Absolutely mobile devices and the software running on them - can serve as individual “servers” - for some kinds of applications and services.  Call it “wireless network” or “distributed architecture” - I think you’re getting the  point.

Individual’s dashboards not only serve as a storage of their own person data, but their groups, communities and networks data - as well.  And it’s more than storage.

Interoperability, friending, accessing other’s data, collaboration of all sorts - will all happen via one’s “dashboard”.  It already is.

2.  Obviously entity’s will want to protect and evolve their brands, but I think that exclusion from the distributed world will hurt you more, than creating a closed, propriety brand. The very nature of being open - is hanging with all the open peeps.  Those who choose to remain closed - will be shunned.  And if they want that as their brand, then God bless them.

This is where the notion of “dashboard containers” comes in.  Think of them as a new set of microformats embedded in each dashboard’s page.  These containers would describe who owns the dashboard, how it’s configured, what are it’s social graph and list fo contacts and what is the content associated with their dashboard.  And media too!  Dashboard containers will serve as a level playing field normalizer effect - so ALL dashboards can connect to each other!

Via two-way APIs.