NosDa: Being the inventor of the Circle of Friends do you feel proud that it is being used by so many other people around the web?

jonathanbishop: Absolutely. People often ask me whether I regret not patenting the Circle of Friends, but its always been more important to me that my ideas are accepted and used than I have the sole rights to use them.


NosDa: What inspired you to invent the Circle of Friends?

jonathanbishop: Its a bit of a techie reason I'm afraid. Databases was one of the subjects I most enjoyed at university and a day I was attempting to develop an Instant Messaging application using a database I had one of my 'wouldn't it be great' moments, where I thought it would be a good idea if people could not only see who is in their buddy list, but click on a buddy and see their list.


NosDa: What challenges did you face whilst developing the Circle of Friends?

jonathanbishop: When I went to university to study computing, all I wanted to do was develop for the Web. However the courses offered by universities were either orientated towards developing snazzy designs or programming for desktop computers. The main challenges I faced were getting what I knew how to do on the desktop to the Web, and I've got to thank a lecturer at my university, Ray Kingdon for helping me do that.


NosDa: Do you see the Circle of Friends continuing to evolve and develop further?

jonathanbishop: Well Friendster recently got a patent for a system which combines the Web of Contacts with my Circle of Friends. In an age of open source I do not think anyone should have a monopoly on ideas, and I would like to see any improvements on the Circle of Friends be as freely available as I made it.


NosDa: Will your Circle of Friends still be used in 20 years time?

jonathanbishop: I would hope so. One of the core differences between the Circle of Friends and the Web of Contacts is that the Circle of Friends allows people to manage their friends and decide who they want to keep and who they want to remove. It gives people a freedom to have control over their lives, where governments and corporations are trying to take over in many other areas. I hope that the day when artificially intelligent computers tell people who their friends are and take away the choice given to them by the Circle of Friends doesn't arrive.


NosDa: And finally what are you planning to invent next, or what projects are you working on?

jonathanbishop: Well I used to own the domain name, communal-computing.co.uk, when I was interested in the idea of people using technology in the community in social situations. Later I developed my first mobile e-learning system called PARLE. Ideas I'm working on are based on mobile technology in a social and educational context.