Understanding the role of Digital Commons: The making of HTML5
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HTML5 is a new digital commons that was finalized in 2014 and strengthened the technological capabilities of the World Wide Web. It was developed through a collective and cooperative process between the WhatWG and W3C standards bodies. The development of HTML5 helped address issues from the proliferation of proprietary technologies, the rise of mobile devices, and the W3C's slow progress. HTML5 adoption has led to a new approach of living standards that can quickly incorporate useful features without lengthy deliberation. However, questions remain regarding how data collection and use impacts user privacy and commodification in the digital economy.
Understanding the role of Digital Commons: The making of HTML5
- 1. Understanding the role of Digital Commons: The making of HTML5 3/9/2016 Dr. Raúl Tabarés #4SEASST2016 Barcelona
- 2. Index Introduction & Methodology HTML5 as a new digital commons A growing interest in digital commons Has HTML5 put an end to the browser wars or is just a ceasefire? 2 ▌ The making of HTML5 Metadata and its darkside Discussion & Prognosis
- 3. • Digital commons is a prominent element in the knowledge and digital economies. The predominance of FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) in different platforms and ecosystems has paved the way for new digital business models that have stimulated new forms of value in society. HTML5 is a new digital commons that was finally concluded in 2014 (W3C, 2014) and has added significant technological capabilities to the structure of the World Wide Web towards a much-more embedded, flexible and ubiquitous techno-social platform. In this contribution we describe the making of HTML5 and we reflect about the collective and cooperative innovation processes that have made it possible. We face this analysis with some lead users of this technology (17 semi-structured interviews with 21 HTML5 experts). 3 ▌ Introduction & Methodology
- 5. • Commons interest has risen in recent decades due to different causes. New structures of work pushed by knowledge economies demand a more flexible and agile structures that can create value through the personalization of goods and services. Commons refers to a variety of solutions, resources and knowledge that are shared by a community of commoners (Benkler, 2006; Fuster-Morell, 2010; Ostrom, 1990). Commons always consists of three elements (Wittel, 2014): People that share the commons Resources that are being produced/shared/consumed A normative framework that establishes the rules of how commons are producing/sharing/maintaining and developing further Digital technologies have spoiled the emergence of different digital resources created throughout a commons basis. These digital commons refer to the immaterial world and the realm of culture (Wittel, 2014) and are the product of social production (Benkler, 2006) processes that are necessary for social interaction and further production. 5 ▌ A growing interest in digital commons
- 6. • Mayo Fuster Morell enounces digital commons as “information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be non-exclusivedible, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources” (p5 Fuster-Morell, 2010) FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is one of the most popular examples of digital commons but other examples likewise IETF and W3C standards, Internet protocols, Wikipedia encyclopedia and Mozilla Firefox browser are also famous. Most recently, open hardware (C. Anderson, 2012; Johar, Lipparini, & Addarii, 2015; Lindtner, 2014; Morozov, 2014; Smith, Hielscher, Dickel, Söderberg, & Oost, 2013) is contributing to the popularization of digital commons in society too. 6 ▌ A growing interest in digital commons
- 7. • In June 2004, at a workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents hosted by the W3C , several developers from Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation formed the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WhatWG) independently of the W3C (Franganillo, 2010). At the event, Opera and Mozilla professionals presented the vision they had at the time of the future of the Web, which could be summed up as follows: “To transform HTML4 into a standard capable of including new features for modern web application developers” (Pilgrim, 2010). They also stressed the importance of the 7 principles that informed their proposal (The Mozzilla Foundation & Opera Software, 2004): Backwards Compatibility, clear migration path Well-defined error handling Users should not be exposed to authoring errors Practical use Scripting is here to stay Device-specific profiling should be avoided Open process 7 ▌ The making of HTML5
- 8. • The reason for setting up the group was the disagreement regarding the W3C’s vision of standards. In the eyes of the WhatWG, the W3C’s approach was too academic. However, the W3C appeared to be seeking a replacement for HTML from among various technologies, particularly XHTML 2.0 (O´Mara, 2012). Two years after the workshop, XHTML2 was languishing while the new features of HTML raised high expectations. This fact was combined with criticism of the W3C’s slow progress and little concrete results (Castro, 2007). That´s why Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C announced in October 2006 that they would be working together with the WhatWG to develop HTML further (Berners-Lee, 2006). In October 2009, the W3C dismantled the XHTML2 working group (Le Hegaret, 2009) and abandoned activities in this language in order to concentrate its efforts on developing HTML5. In the following years, browsers began to support HTML5 (Mozilla Firefox was the first to take the plunge) and a phase of raising awareness about this technology started. 8 ▌ The making of HTML5
- 10. • The rising of HTML5 mirrors a crisis concerning the future of the Web. The proliferation of proprietary software to support multimedia elements (especially Flash), the emergence of mobile devices and the excessively academic approach to XHTML2 all combined to call into question the viability of the “Web as platform”. HTML5 represents a new digital commons that has emerged to strengthen the technological structure of the Web. The Web does not belong to anyone but at the same time it belongs to all its users. A recurrent problem in the history of the Web has been the gap between specifications and implementations. HTML5 has also stimulated a new way of creating standards conceptualized as the “Living Standard” (Tabarés-Gutiérrez, 2015). This “Living Standard” has also provided agile means to standardize useful elements without having to become entangled in excessively long and tedious processes of deliberation and consensus. This approach is a way to test functionalities demanded by users in experimental environments that safeguard the stability of the web specifications. 10 ▌ HTML5 as a new digital commons
- 12. • The main difference from past times lies in the robust technological capabilities that are at the backbone of the standard. HTML5 is a stronger hypertext markup language and comprises a large number of previously nonexistent technologies over which new “browser wars” are being conducted. The most significant change in the history of the development of web standards has been the shift from prioritizing PCs in favor of mobile devices (Tabarés-Gutiérrez, 2015) which are increasingly common as a gateway to the Web. This multi-device approach has created new and different needs from the PC era and has stress the importance of values such as ubiquity, mobility, and interoperability. Consequently, the standard must be more robust in terms of technological capabilities and features. 12 ▌ Has HTML5 put an end to the browser wars or is just a ceasefire?
- 13. • As it was observed by several of our interviewees during our field work, the new version of HTML is a turning point in the history of web technologies. It´s a quest for open, collective and collaborative innovation. In previous episodes in the history of the Web the innovation potential of browsers have overruled many of the core values of the hypertext standard. The main difference with earlier stages in the history of web development is that the majority of the big players involved by the proliferation of proprietary software became actively aware of the problem. The aim was to establish a kind of blank slate regarding web standards. Contrary to previous periods in the history of the Web, technological values appreciated by users were prioritized over commercial interests. This is the main contribution of the WhatWG group. 13 ▌ Has HTML5 put an end to the browser wars or is just a ceasefire?
- 15. • Another of the most innovative features of HTML5 is the semantic assets included in its syntax that improve document presentation. Elements like article, header, hrgroup, nav, section, aside, and footer. The specification editor, Ian Hickson, used several data mining tools owned by Google in order to extract information from around one billion web pages. The goal of this experiment was to identify the most commonly used names for these generic div elements (Lawson & Mills, 2010). The new element names used in HTML5 reflects the twenty most commonly used types in the pages analyzed in this study. Opera Software also conducted a similar study (known as MAMA) with a sample of three and a half million URLs that included a higher number of statistics and values. These types of elements that provide all kinds of information about users and their browsing patterns make it possible for many of the companies created during the Web 2.0 phenomenon to monetize user-generated content. 15 ▌ Metadata and its darkside
- 16. Result of the most popular names of DIV class founded in the Web. Source: Google Result of the most popular names of DIV class founded in the Web. Source: Google
- 17. • The majority of the digital business models relies on the capture of value through the audiences generated. The attention economy (Goldhaber, 1997) has make it possible several technological ways for funneling targeted advertising through these digital platforms. The generation of content by users has paved the way for a new understanding of consumption and capitalism (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). These companies create value by generating virtual environments where users establish, maintain and develop social interactions with other users of the same platform, while simultaneously generating a variety of digital traces (Schuster et al., 2014). Paradoxically, these users do not possess their own footprints which leads to a phenomenon of hyper-capitalism (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Fuchs, 2010; Morozov, 2014; Scholz, 2012). The lack of transparency in these data collection, management and reusing processes has given rise to various doubts in society since users lack informed knowledge about the subsequent uses made of their data. 17 ▌ Metadata and its darkside
- 18. • HTML5 as a new digital commons that has emerged to stop the proliferation of proprietary software that occurs during the explosion of Web 2.0 platforms and the spread of multimedia contents. New approach to the process of standardization focused in pragmatism, backwards compatibility, open processes, stakeholder involvement and agile methods. Does the Living Standard means a loss in the authority of standardization of the W3C? Does the big players of the digital economy have kidnapped standardization processes? Commodification of every data? Commodification of everyday living? Prosumers and Digital Business Models are the main forces of web standardization? We have to rethink Web standards. Digital commons have to be spread around data in order to prevent inequalities in the digital sphere and to foster a much more inclusive digital space. 18 ▌ Discussion & prognosis
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