Even today, colonialism assumes new forms. It no longer dominates only bodies, but appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. … Here lies one of the most urgent moral challenges of our time: to ensure that shared knowledge becomes a true common good rather than an instrument of dominance. This requires restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit. Otherwise, the digital age will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form.
Solid is an open standard file system for the web. A Pod (personal online data store) is a named folder within the file system that stores your data. Your data is stored encrypted, securely and privately, under your control. You choose with whom and when you share your data. No more locking your data up with big tech without your control and say so. Let us share equitably in the economic and societal benefits from our digital and AI age. Otherwise, and without collective meaning and purpose across society, we stand on the brink of planetary destruction (Ilia Delio, p139).
A few incredibly wealthy individuals today are appropriating your data to transform it into exploitable and very profitable information (encyclical ¶ 178). We need to move our focus, through Solid Pod to protect your privacy and and to have sovereignty over your own data. Apps and libraries are being developed by the Software Innovation Institute of the Australian National University in collaboration with Togaware Pty Ltd and Solid AU.
Our collection of useful and privacy-first applications will store your data encrypted on any Solid server, world-wide. Many servers offer a free tier for you to explore. As your data needs increase or if you need professionally managed hosting, then you can migrate to other plans and servers, anywhere in the world. Register with one of the available Hosted Pod Services and take note of your WebId.
Since 2020 SII have run many trials, including health clinic support of individual patients, support of people with multiple sclerosis, and clinical trials in mental health care in partnership with medical device manufacturers. In addition to our foundation libraries supporting app developers, we have nearly 20 productivity and self support apps freely available for anyone to try out.
Key features of this new focus on your data in your hands include:
The ANU Software Innovation Institute works to spread these capabilities freely, for anyone to build upon, to support our humanity world wide. Our open-source solidpod and solidui packages for Flutter are the foundations for many Solid Pod apps.
Contact UsRecent research articles, publications, and projects from the ANU Software Innovation Institute on decentralised data, privacy-first infrastructure, and Solid POD technology.
The App Showcase allows you to immediately run any of our apps within your browser without having to install anything (you will need to have registered for your own Pod though). We have many Solid apps published, like the randomly chosen example app below. More are in development. Our apps are written in Flutter and so run on any platform.
We have published packages to the Flutter/Dart repository pub.dev to support quickly building Flutter-based Solid apps. Our packages (libraries) include solidui and solidpod.
Claude Code can be used to build a solidui based flutter app almost immediately. You can find sample code and contribute to our open development by visiting our github repositories anusii and gjwgit.
Our apps are written in Flutter. They are all published as open source. Being written in Flutter they run on any platform. You can try them out in the browser (tap the run button as you hover over a particular app) or install them on your device from the installers available from the installers. Tap of the folder icon for each app to visit the app github home. We are also working toward publishing them on the Google Play Store for Android and on Snapcraft for GNU/Linux. They are not all there yet, but keep an eye out for them.
Here are some frequenty asked questions about Solid Pods, the technology behind it, and specific apps. Note that the following is only a very high level defintion of the technology. If you wish to learn much more take a look at the Solid Project AU Website
Solid (Social linked data) is a server API specification that lets individuals and groups store their data securely in decentralised Data Vaults storing user PODs (Personal Online Datastores). PODs are secure web based data stores for different data types. When data is stored in a POD, its owners control the people and applications that can access it. For details visit the Solid Project Solid Project
We are keen to connect with other developers in Australia developing Solid Pod technology and apps, ideally as open source software. Please contact us if you would like to play a role in the future of data or if you have an app that you would like listed here.
Lead by Professor Graham Williams, Chief Scientist of the Software Innovation Institute (SII) of the Australian National University (ANU), we are developing new privacy-first technology to support app development using the Flutter/Dart ecosystem. With a focus on open-source software and a culture of sharing, all of our package and app development is freely available for anyone to use and build on. Please get in touch if you would like to collaborate with us.
Software Innovation Institute, the Australian National University
Software Innovation Institute, the Australian National University
Software Innovation Institute, the Australian National University
Software Innovation Institute, the Australian National University
Software Innovation Institute, the Australian National University
Software Innovation Institute, the Australian National University
To know more about our project or to get involved in app development drop us a message.
108 North Road, Australian National University, Acton ACT 2601, Australia
SolidCommunity@togaware.com
