Respect Network and Kynetx Release “The Personal Channel”

14 June 2012, London: At the World Economic Forum Rethinking Personal Data expert meeting today, Respect Network and Kynetx released a new paper, The Personal Channel: The Extraordinary Benefits of Communicating Via Personal Clouds. The second in a series of papers by Respect Network Architects Phil Windley and Drummond Reed, this paper explains why personal channels are poised to be the killer app of an open standard relationship network just like email was the killer app of the Internet.

“A ‘killer app’ enables you to do something that’s never been possible before,” said Mr. Reed, Managing Director of the Respect Network. “For example, Internet email delivered messages anywhere in the world in seconds instead of days. That’s why it drove the adoption of an entirely new network.”

Mr. Reed and Mr. Windley believe the same will be true for personal channels. “With personal channels, the breakthrough benefit is not speed but automation and intelligence,” said Mr. Windley, founder and CTO of Kynetx. “By using personal clouds to send and receive messages and data, you can go beyond what’s possible with either email or social networks today.”

As an example, the paper cites spam, the scourge of Internet email. Spam exists because email is a single-channel network where addresses do not use access control by default. By contrast, personal channels are a multi-channel network, where each channel is  relationship-specific, and where all channels use access-control by default. “As a consequence, there will be no spam on a personal channel network,” said Mr. Reed. “You will only have the channels you want, and if a channel ever starts sending you messages you don’t want, you can either retune it (change your subscription preferences) or delete it.”

Another major difference is message processing. Email and social networks deliver messages intended primarily for human processing. This is why we spend so much time sorting through inboxes or social feeds. On a personal channel network, messages are intended for both human and machine processing, so machines can do much of the sorting, filtering, and organizing work. “Technically, every message on a personal channel network is an programmatic event, and personal clouds process these events to automate many routine tasks,” said Mr. Windley. “For example, personal channels can automatically fill out forms or keep data synchronized, such as address books or calendars.”

The paper covers ten specific benefits of personal channels that are not available via other electronic messaging or data sharing networks today. It concludes by sh how personal channels enable rich sharing as described by Marc Stiegler of HP Labs.