Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Assistants find meeting times without you
Assistants set the time
Scheduling usually means a string of texts about times that almost work and time zones that complicate things. With the trusted person network, a user states an intention, such as meeting someone before the end of the week, and the assistant coordinates with the other person's assistant and puts the event on the calendar.
Access per connection
Each connection comes with its own settings. A spouse can see everything. A colleague might see a work calendar and the parts of the inbox that hold documentation, and nothing else. Every link between two people carries its own level of access, which makes the network different from a friend graph where two people are simply connected.
When trust breaks
Breaking trust has consequences inside the network. If someone who was given calendar access starts digging for other information, the owner's assistant texts them to report it, which can damage the relationship in the way social norms already do.
Why is scheduling so hard to automate?
Scheduling is a constraint problem in which each person holds private information about when they are free. Without a shared view of calendars, the only way to solve it is a back-and-forth of proposals and rejections. Calendly, founded in 2013 by Tope Awotona, became popular by replacing that exchange with a link to one person's open slots. An assistant that talks to another assistant moves the same negotiation out of the human conversation.
How do apps limit what another party sees?
Apps usually ask for narrow permissions through a standard called OAuth. Under OAuth, a calendar service can grant an app read-only access to events, or access to create events, without ever sharing a password. Each grant is a separate scope that the owner can revoke. Google Calendar and most other major calendar systems use this model.
Why do social norms govern what data is shared?
The philosopher Helen Nissenbaum argues that privacy depends on whether information moves in line with the norms of the setting where it was shared. Her theory, called contextual integrity, was laid out in a 2004 paper. A calendar shared with a colleague carries different expectations than one shared with a spouse. Under her view, a flow of information can be a violation even when the information itself is not secret.
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