10 ms·

Ok, a lot of people don't know the context for this. Last week, the Internet Archive ran the Decentralized Web Summit. It was an opportunity for new projects [

by pfraze 10y ago

Ok, a lot of people don't know the context for this. Last week, the Internet Archive ran the Decentralized Web Summit. It was an opportunity for new projects [1] to gather with prominent people in the industry [2]. It was productive and very fun. It also resulted in a bunch of news pieces, like this one, which have been hitting the HN FP for a week. Some of those articles have been better than others; a lot of them feel like fluff to me. (There are some semi-interesting bullet points buried at the bottom of this one.) What was interesting, was the level of focused energy that this event was showing. The Internet Archive did a great job organizing it, and the speakers were compelling, but the real drive came from the different teams that were present. The news orgs all focus on "Recognizable name calls for new Web," but those speakers only offered spiritual guidance to something that's moving entirely on its own. And, I think they'd be the first to say so. There was plenty of self-awareness and open discussion. Kahle gave a good talk at the end of day 1, where he pointed out that nobody quite knows what the end-user's interest is here. Are we talking about "open-source websites?" What's the big picture? Doctorow, Baker, Kahle, and Lee all talked about values. Cerf talked about Named Data Networking, which is about content-addressing, an idea that's definitely at the heart of the new work. Zooko threw cold water on everybody ("Is this just 1999 again?"). It was very interesting. A lot of it is online [3] 1 IPFS, Dat, WebTorrent, ZeroNet, InterLedger, MediaChain, Neocities, many others 2 Vint Cerf, Mitchell Baker, Tim Berners Lee, Brewster Kahle, Cory Doctorow, many others. RMS even made an appearance. 3 http://www.decentralizedweb.net/ http://www.decentralizedweb.net/

kordless 10y ago
I'd prefer some action items from meetings like these. What we need is an interledger + IPFS integration with some form of ledgered/DAO backed deployment mechanism. This will give us high trust software deployments that also scale for high decentralization across the world's infrastructure. IoT updates done this way, for example, would allow devices get their own wallets and use those funds to pay for their own existence.
- CJefferson 10y ago
  Never have I read a post where Poe's law applied my strongly. If you are serious, I think perhaps you are trying to solve too many social problems with technological ones -- see the recent DAO drainage -- if devices had wallets to pay for their own existence, they would almost certainly just get hacked. They'd certainly be a great target!
  - kordless 10y ago
    The drainer of the DAO well might have a point arguing it is "legal" to do, given the protocol allows it. Solving that without a hard fork will be exceedingly enlightening. Solving social problems is a separate problem entirely, given the socials require centralization. We still need centralization, of course, but it has zero to do with embodying trusted infrastructure.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "Kahle gave a good talk at the end of day 1, where he pointed out that nobody quite knows what the end-user's interest is here. Are we talking about "open-source websites?"" To me the answer is obvious. Look at how the web is used now. Like it or not a high proportion of web activity is social. However, users of sites with a social focus recognise that there are drawbacks to the current arrangements, in that your user experience does not always reflect what's best for you. To give a simple example, the news feed on Facebook is curated based on algorithms you do not have full control over. From a technology perspective, there are two key parts to what could replace this arrangement to provide a tangible benefit... home servers and decentralised identity. Home servers would need to be as close to zero configuration as possible, whilst still remaining secure. Decentralised identity would then be used to connect to the home servers. One way to think about it would be... instead of typing in a website address, you choose from a contact list. Whatever people share is held on their personal server. You could use apps that run on your own server to aggregate media from your contacts. The tangible benefit is found in connecting to others without relying on middle men. Contact is direct whilst still retaining convenience.
- hanniabu 10y ago
  Very interesting idea about simple home servers used to eliminate the middle men. I have to admit, this actually seems like a viable option if it could be done right. Good idea that I think deserves more thought and should be looked into. I'm curious what the opinions of others are on this idea.
  - doublerebel 10y ago
    This is what I'm working on at Optik -- but forget the idea of a server. All we need is a device, a writing program, and a sync program. Everyone already has these tools in their pocket, they just have a bad interface and therefore nobody knows how to use it in this manner. Identity is solved by real-world trust. Facebook has proven most of us are separated by less than 5 degrees.
    - hanniabu 10y ago
merkle_tree 10y ago
The context for this is that it's Father's Day.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  In the US. Offtopic: Even Canva, an Australian company that knows I'm in Australia, sent me a Father's Day related email. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%27s_Day#Dates_around_the_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%27s_Day#Dates_around_th...
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    >In the US And a couple dozen other countries.
paganel 10y ago
> Zooko threw cold water on everybody ("Is this just 1999 again?") I have all the respect in the world for people like Vint Cerf, but the fact that he mentioned "copyright" and "intellectual property" twice in his list of otherwise quite interesting proposals make me doubtful about "1999" ever making a come-back. (I personally view the 1999-2005 or so period as a "good" one for the Internet, all of the dreams of that period have mostly been shattered by now). I only came online in 2000, so to speak, but I distinctly remember that back in those days IP and copyrights were the last things on people's minds. Things like Napster and Audiogalaxy were pushing the Internet forward, and you can look at Wikipedia as "infringing" on the British Encyclopedia's rights to be the ultimate encyclopedia or you might take a second, more cautionary look, at the fact that Google built its business and its current $500+ billion status on stealing other websites' content and storing it on their servers.
- wturner 10y ago
  Jaron Lanier has written about the hallowing out of the middle class due to intellectual and creative property being accepted as "free on the internet". As it stands the Googles of the world have private servers, patents and proprietary technology, ( and the money to protect themselves) but Google can scrape the creative resources of billions of individuals without paying them. In that regard a return to creative/intellectual property rights specifically for individuals might be a forward thinking move assuming it leads to payouts. I know the details are more complicated ( and I might be wrong) but I thought I would chime in.
  - toyg 10y ago
    The middle class has never been involved in creative IP in huge numbers. What they were involved in is a lot of officework which has been automated away, and union-protected jobs that have now disappeared. Stuff like designing presentations now done in Powerpoint, typing up reports now autogenerated, doing typographical work now completely removed, manning and stocking a shop you can now bypass with Amazon, distributing products to such shops which are now gone, raising ads for now-dead newspapers, managing factory processes that are now in China, working for local authorities now so cash-strapped they're literally bankrupt... The IP industry actually boomed in the late '90s, as the Internet was booming. We now produce more IP content than ever before, selling to the entire planet. I don't see any relationship whatsoever between IP and middle-class crisis, tbh. Disintermediation simply kills people in the middle. Some of those middlemen might have been IP-related, but they were few.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
I also attended the Decentralized Web Summit (the first 6 hours) and it was great. I hope they have this every year. The Summit was inexpensive, the venue at the Internet Archive building was cool, the speakers and panels were uniformly interesting, and the food was tasty. Good job by the organizers! I sometimes I feel like I am by my self on privacy and freedom issues. Very few of my non-tech friends & family get why I think government and corporate encroachment on privacy and freedom is an issue in the USA. So, it was refreshing to be with people who mostly have the same concerns that I do.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > The Summit was inexpensive, the venue at the Internet Archive building was cool, the speakers and panels were uniformly interesting, and the food was tasty. That pretty much guarantees they will outgrow the venue shortly, if not immediately.
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  > sometimes I feel like I am by my self on privacy and freedom issues. Very few of my non-tech friends & family get why I think government and corporate encroachment on privacy and freedom is an issue Privacy and Freedom are values. The web (along with Facebook et.al.) is a product. I once read that Steve Jobs told Drew Houston that file sync was "a feature not a product". Obvi SJ was wrong but it's an interesting distinction to make. The WWW as Tim designed it solved a problem it turns out many people have. Most people don't perceive a privacy and freedom problem though. The can say what they want online and most of us haven't felt tangible effects from a loss of privacy. Perception is reality after all. What I want to know is what is the next revolutionary WWW like Internet product that solves a pain many people feel? After the WWW what hidden pain is there that might bring about innovation in the truest sense?
  - cageface 10y ago
    I once read that Steve Jobs told Drew Houston that file sync was "a feature not a product". Obvi SJ was wrong but it's an interesting distinction to make. He might have actually been correct if Apple could make iCloud work properly. As it is you'd be crazy to trust your data to it and Dropbox is a no-brainer product.
odbol_ 10y ago
The ideas they talked about at this summit were really exciting: my favorite is the Interplanetary File System: a decentralized way to share files without a server. They did a crazy demo of a chat room where you could chat live, drag and drop to share files, even watch streaming videos inline, all without a central server! It was completely peer-to-peer, and all done in JavaScript! Corey Doctorow also had a really good talk, I encourage everyone to watch the stream. There's a summary and link here: “The Internet is the Only Weapon We Have Left” @odbol https://medium.com/@odbol/the-internet-is-the-only-weapon-we-have-left-ecb4a32da03a https://medium.com/@odbol/the-internet-is-the-only-weapon-we...

by pfraze 10y ago

kordless 10y ago

I'd prefer some action items from meetings like these. What we need is an interledger + IPFS integration with some form of ledgered/DAO backed deployment mechanism. This will give us high trust software deployments that also scale for high decentralization across the world's infrastructure. IoT updates done this way, for example, would allow devices get their own wallets and use those funds to pay for their own existence.

CJefferson 10y ago
Never have I read a post where Poe's law applied my strongly. If you are serious, I think perhaps you are trying to solve too many social problems with technological ones -- see the recent DAO drainage -- if devices had wallets to pay for their own existence, they would almost certainly just get hacked. They'd certainly be a great target!
- kordless 10y ago
  The drainer of the DAO well might have a point arguing it is "legal" to do, given the protocol allows it. Solving that without a hard fork will be exceedingly enlightening. Solving social problems is a separate problem entirely, given the socials require centralization. We still need centralization, of course, but it has zero to do with embodying trusted infrastructure.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "Kahle gave a good talk at the end of day 1, where he pointed out that nobody quite knows what the end-user's interest is here. Are we talking about "open-source websites?"" To me the answer is obvious. Look at how the web is used now. Like it or not a high proportion of web activity is social. However, users of sites with a social focus recognise that there are drawbacks to the current arrangements, in that your user experience does not always reflect what's best for you. To give a simple example, the news feed on Facebook is curated based on algorithms you do not have full control over. From a technology perspective, there are two key parts to what could replace this arrangement to provide a tangible benefit... home servers and decentralised identity. Home servers would need to be as close to zero configuration as possible, whilst still remaining secure. Decentralised identity would then be used to connect to the home servers. One way to think about it would be... instead of typing in a website address, you choose from a contact list. Whatever people share is held on their personal server. You could use apps that run on your own server to aggregate media from your contacts. The tangible benefit is found in connecting to others without relying on middle men. Contact is direct whilst still retaining convenience.

hanniabu 10y ago
Very interesting idea about simple home servers used to eliminate the middle men. I have to admit, this actually seems like a viable option if it could be done right. Good idea that I think deserves more thought and should be looked into. I'm curious what the opinions of others are on this idea.
- doublerebel 10y ago
  This is what I'm working on at Optik -- but forget the idea of a server. All we need is a device, a writing program, and a sync program. Everyone already has these tools in their pocket, they just have a bad interface and therefore nobody knows how to use it in this manner. Identity is solved by real-world trust. Facebook has proven most of us are separated by less than 5 degrees.
  - hanniabu 10y ago

merkle_tree 10y ago

The context for this is that it's Father's Day.

voltagex_ 10y ago
In the US. Offtopic: Even Canva, an Australian company that knows I'm in Australia, sent me a Father's Day related email. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%27s_Day#Dates_around_the_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%27s_Day#Dates_around_th...
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  >In the US And a couple dozen other countries.

paganel 10y ago

> Zooko threw cold water on everybody ("Is this just 1999 again?") I have all the respect in the world for people like Vint Cerf, but the fact that he mentioned "copyright" and "intellectual property" twice in his list of otherwise quite interesting proposals make me doubtful about "1999" ever making a come-back. (I personally view the 1999-2005 or so period as a "good" one for the Internet, all of the dreams of that period have mostly been shattered by now). I only came online in 2000, so to speak, but I distinctly remember that back in those days IP and copyrights were the last things on people's minds. Things like Napster and Audiogalaxy were pushing the Internet forward, and you can look at Wikipedia as "infringing" on the British Encyclopedia's rights to be the ultimate encyclopedia or you might take a second, more cautionary look, at the fact that Google built its business and its current $500+ billion status on stealing other websites' content and storing it on their servers.

wturner 10y ago
Jaron Lanier has written about the hallowing out of the middle class due to intellectual and creative property being accepted as "free on the internet". As it stands the Googles of the world have private servers, patents and proprietary technology, ( and the money to protect themselves) but Google can scrape the creative resources of billions of individuals without paying them. In that regard a return to creative/intellectual property rights specifically for individuals might be a forward thinking move assuming it leads to payouts. I know the details are more complicated ( and I might be wrong) but I thought I would chime in.
- toyg 10y ago
  The middle class has never been involved in creative IP in huge numbers. What they were involved in is a lot of officework which has been automated away, and union-protected jobs that have now disappeared. Stuff like designing presentations now done in Powerpoint, typing up reports now autogenerated, doing typographical work now completely removed, manning and stocking a shop you can now bypass with Amazon, distributing products to such shops which are now gone, raising ads for now-dead newspapers, managing factory processes that are now in China, working for local authorities now so cash-strapped they're literally bankrupt... The IP industry actually boomed in the late '90s, as the Internet was booming. We now produce more IP content than ever before, selling to the entire planet. I don't see any relationship whatsoever between IP and middle-class crisis, tbh. Disintermediation simply kills people in the middle. Some of those middlemen might have been IP-related, but they were few.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

I also attended the Decentralized Web Summit (the first 6 hours) and it was great. I hope they have this every year. The Summit was inexpensive, the venue at the Internet Archive building was cool, the speakers and panels were uniformly interesting, and the food was tasty. Good job by the organizers! I sometimes I feel like I am by my self on privacy and freedom issues. Very few of my non-tech friends & family get why I think government and corporate encroachment on privacy and freedom is an issue in the USA. So, it was refreshing to be with people who mostly have the same concerns that I do.

kbenson 10y ago
> The Summit was inexpensive, the venue at the Internet Archive building was cool, the speakers and panels were uniformly interesting, and the food was tasty. That pretty much guarantees they will outgrow the venue shortly, if not immediately.
ryanmarsh 10y ago
> sometimes I feel like I am by my self on privacy and freedom issues. Very few of my non-tech friends & family get why I think government and corporate encroachment on privacy and freedom is an issue Privacy and Freedom are values. The web (along with Facebook et.al.) is a product. I once read that Steve Jobs told Drew Houston that file sync was "a feature not a product". Obvi SJ was wrong but it's an interesting distinction to make. The WWW as Tim designed it solved a problem it turns out many people have. Most people don't perceive a privacy and freedom problem though. The can say what they want online and most of us haven't felt tangible effects from a loss of privacy. Perception is reality after all. What I want to know is what is the next revolutionary WWW like Internet product that solves a pain many people feel? After the WWW what hidden pain is there that might bring about innovation in the truest sense?
- cageface 10y ago
  I once read that Steve Jobs told Drew Houston that file sync was "a feature not a product". Obvi SJ was wrong but it's an interesting distinction to make. He might have actually been correct if Apple could make iCloud work properly. As it is you'd be crazy to trust your data to it and Dropbox is a no-brainer product.

odbol_ 10y ago

The ideas they talked about at this summit were really exciting: my favorite is the Interplanetary File System: a decentralized way to share files without a server. They did a crazy demo of a chat room where you could chat live, drag and drop to share files, even watch streaming videos inline, all without a central server! It was completely peer-to-peer, and all done in JavaScript! Corey Doctorow also had a really good talk, I encourage everyone to watch the stream. There's a summary and link here: “The Internet is the Only Weapon We Have Left” @odbol https://medium.com/@odbol/the-internet-is-the-only-weapon-we-have-left-ecb4a32da03a https://medium.com/@odbol/the-internet-is-the-only-weapon-we...