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> "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-sou

> "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
    The only thing I don't like about it being in a phone is what happens when you change phones? How's that transfer made easily? How can v you guarantee everything will be removed when they get rid of their old phone? Also, I have only about 15 apps, 300 pictures, and 10 sorry videos and I'm constantly running out of space even with half the stearate being on an SD card. I can't imagine puerile having enough storage to run something like this on their phone.
    - doublerebel 10y ago
      We could easily fit more storage (and more battery) on phones, there just isn't the market demand for it. With such a decentralized system, demand may increase. Most knowledge as we use it now is ephemeral and can be somewhat centralized safely. The permanent knowledge or at least the trusted hashes of that knowledge can travel with us.
      - bitstacker 10y ago
        Trouble with doing it all through phones: - Data plans. Everyone connecting to your blog through your phone would use up a hell of a lot of data. - iPhones are notoriously hostile to P2P apps, so that rules out about half of all smartphone users. There are other issues but those are the most significant imo.
nine_k 10y ago
Interestingly, Urbit seems to target squarelyat this space.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Yes, I was very interested when I learnt what Urbit did, as I think it ticks a lot of the right boxes. The only weakness for me is how it handles distribution of identity, but that's not a fundamental issue, it can be changed whilst still keeping what makes Urbit promising as a home server platform.
losteric 10y ago
> home servers and decentralised identity. Home servers would need to be as close to zero configuration as possible, whilst still remaining secure. People aren't going to buy more black-box hardware they don't directly interact with. Consumers already struggle with routers. I agree with the core concept, but I think we'll need mobile servers instead of home servers... a simple "Internet" app that installs on anyone's laptop, desktop, or cellphone. Something with a distributed/peer-to-peer file system for ubiquitous content, and peer-to-peer RSS. The harder question is (complex) querying. How do we avoid the centralization of Google, while still retaining the functionality? I don't see how such a new service could survive if there's a regression in search.
- sdenton4 10y ago
  Querying is indeed the real issue. I've between reading up on delay tolerant networking; it seems pretty tough to hit the right balance between making metadata generally available and crushing the network with metadata updates. Centralized directories make it easier, though still not trivial, to make content findable on a network. There have between a bunch of proposals (eg, grokster) out there which have started off as radically decentralized, but eventually took on a layer or three of super peers to manage that metadata transfer, after the fully decentralized model failed under real traffic. (Good datasets also seem to be a problem here. The available ones are pretty small or have a lot of caveats, which makes it tough to really see how a solution will play out is the real world.)
- zanny 10y ago
  IPFS already does this and exists. It is decentralized, it lets you put your own content in it whenever you want, and anyone can use it. IE, you can simply drop an html page into your own IPFS directory, and other users of IPFS can browse to it (assuming you put global read permissions on it). It is no more complicated than a daemon and a virtual file system.
  - girzel 10y ago
    That's sort of amazing. Thanks for posting this!
galistoca 10y ago
Ever thought about whether the assumption that having control over what your see on your Facebook feed might be incorrect? If we're talking about the ideal world that may be true, but the real world is far from perfect. If you ask 100 people do you want to live a meaningful life, probably 99 of them will say yes. But do they? Probably 1 out of those 100 will live a meaningful life. If you ask people do you want to be told what to do, or do you want to do what you want, most of them will say they want to do what they want. But in reality most people just want to be told what to do because making decisions and being responsible for it is not an easy thing. Coming back to Facebook feed, there's a reason why people keep using Facebook even though many people hate it. Sure it's not ideal but there will never be an ideal world. I think the reason why most "decentralization" advocates never succeed is exactly because they're being too ideal (read naive) about this. That said I think the pendulum will swing back someday in the future surely, it just won't be by these guys. It will be from some random technology which didn't even aspire to "disrupt" the web.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "But in reality most people just want to be told what to do because making decisions and being responsible for it is not an easy thing." As I said before, content could be curated by apps. You could choose the apps that present the information in the way you like. The difference is, if a better app comes along you can switch to it without losing your past data because all the data would be application-agnostic, there's a greater degree of separation between the raw data and the presentation of that data.
- freshhawk 10y ago
  I think it's just about network effects. Everyone is on Facebook because everyone is on Facebook. Although network effects work the other way as well, when people start leaving social networks they collapse exponentially just like they grew exponentially.
huuu 10y ago
Aren't the main reasons everything went centralized: bandwidth and reliability? Maybe this can be solved with good caching. But what you don't want is your site / post going viral which will bring down your internet connection.
- daurnimator 10y ago
  I'd say the main thing is people's inability to reason without serialisability. Without the serialisation of actions that centralisation gives, it's much harder and hence more expensive to create things.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  Which is why you want content-addressable decentralized storage, so the content gets distributed either peer to peer or through public caching infrastructure that's operated by ISPs, just as IP router are nowadays.
- Kubuxu 10y ago
  This can be solved with for example IPFS. When you download a file you also make it accessible to others. This means that reverse scaling effect kicks in. The more popular the file is the less people access it from original source.
Natanael_L 10y ago
More people thinking about how servers! Great :) I like the concepts of Namecoin & Keybase, IPFS and Tahoe-LAFS, etc, Tor and I2P, CJDNS, PHB's Mathematical Mesh, and so on... Having your own server or cluster that your own devices connect to for anonymization, identity, syncing, federation, etc, would simplify so much.

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
  The only thing I don't like about it being in a phone is what happens when you change phones? How's that transfer made easily? How can v you guarantee everything will be removed when they get rid of their old phone? Also, I have only about 15 apps, 300 pictures, and 10 sorry videos and I'm constantly running out of space even with half the stearate being on an SD card. I can't imagine puerile having enough storage to run something like this on their phone.
  - doublerebel 10y ago
    We could easily fit more storage (and more battery) on phones, there just isn't the market demand for it. With such a decentralized system, demand may increase. Most knowledge as we use it now is ephemeral and can be somewhat centralized safely. The permanent knowledge or at least the trusted hashes of that knowledge can travel with us.
    - bitstacker 10y ago
      Trouble with doing it all through phones: - Data plans. Everyone connecting to your blog through your phone would use up a hell of a lot of data. - iPhones are notoriously hostile to P2P apps, so that rules out about half of all smartphone users. There are other issues but those are the most significant imo.

nine_k 10y ago

Interestingly, Urbit seems to target squarelyat this space.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
Yes, I was very interested when I learnt what Urbit did, as I think it ticks a lot of the right boxes. The only weakness for me is how it handles distribution of identity, but that's not a fundamental issue, it can be changed whilst still keeping what makes Urbit promising as a home server platform.

losteric 10y ago

> home servers and decentralised identity. Home servers would need to be as close to zero configuration as possible, whilst still remaining secure. People aren't going to buy more black-box hardware they don't directly interact with. Consumers already struggle with routers. I agree with the core concept, but I think we'll need mobile servers instead of home servers... a simple "Internet" app that installs on anyone's laptop, desktop, or cellphone. Something with a distributed/peer-to-peer file system for ubiquitous content, and peer-to-peer RSS. The harder question is (complex) querying. How do we avoid the centralization of Google, while still retaining the functionality? I don't see how such a new service could survive if there's a regression in search.

sdenton4 10y ago
Querying is indeed the real issue. I've between reading up on delay tolerant networking; it seems pretty tough to hit the right balance between making metadata generally available and crushing the network with metadata updates. Centralized directories make it easier, though still not trivial, to make content findable on a network. There have between a bunch of proposals (eg, grokster) out there which have started off as radically decentralized, but eventually took on a layer or three of super peers to manage that metadata transfer, after the fully decentralized model failed under real traffic. (Good datasets also seem to be a problem here. The available ones are pretty small or have a lot of caveats, which makes it tough to really see how a solution will play out is the real world.)
zanny 10y ago
IPFS already does this and exists. It is decentralized, it lets you put your own content in it whenever you want, and anyone can use it. IE, you can simply drop an html page into your own IPFS directory, and other users of IPFS can browse to it (assuming you put global read permissions on it). It is no more complicated than a daemon and a virtual file system.
- girzel 10y ago
  That's sort of amazing. Thanks for posting this!

galistoca 10y ago

Ever thought about whether the assumption that having control over what your see on your Facebook feed might be incorrect? If we're talking about the ideal world that may be true, but the real world is far from perfect. If you ask 100 people do you want to live a meaningful life, probably 99 of them will say yes. But do they? Probably 1 out of those 100 will live a meaningful life. If you ask people do you want to be told what to do, or do you want to do what you want, most of them will say they want to do what they want. But in reality most people just want to be told what to do because making decisions and being responsible for it is not an easy thing. Coming back to Facebook feed, there's a reason why people keep using Facebook even though many people hate it. Sure it's not ideal but there will never be an ideal world. I think the reason why most "decentralization" advocates never succeed is exactly because they're being too ideal (read naive) about this. That said I think the pendulum will swing back someday in the future surely, it just won't be by these guys. It will be from some random technology which didn't even aspire to "disrupt" the web.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "But in reality most people just want to be told what to do because making decisions and being responsible for it is not an easy thing." As I said before, content could be curated by apps. You could choose the apps that present the information in the way you like. The difference is, if a better app comes along you can switch to it without losing your past data because all the data would be application-agnostic, there's a greater degree of separation between the raw data and the presentation of that data.
freshhawk 10y ago
I think it's just about network effects. Everyone is on Facebook because everyone is on Facebook. Although network effects work the other way as well, when people start leaving social networks they collapse exponentially just like they grew exponentially.

huuu 10y ago

Aren't the main reasons everything went centralized: bandwidth and reliability? Maybe this can be solved with good caching. But what you don't want is your site / post going viral which will bring down your internet connection.

daurnimator 10y ago
I'd say the main thing is people's inability to reason without serialisability. Without the serialisation of actions that centralisation gives, it's much harder and hence more expensive to create things.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
Which is why you want content-addressable decentralized storage, so the content gets distributed either peer to peer or through public caching infrastructure that's operated by ISPs, just as IP router are nowadays.
Kubuxu 10y ago
This can be solved with for example IPFS. When you download a file you also make it accessible to others. This means that reverse scaling effect kicks in. The more popular the file is the less people access it from original source.

Natanael_L 10y ago

More people thinking about how servers! Great :) I like the concepts of Namecoin & Keybase, IPFS and Tahoe-LAFS, etc, Tor and I2P, CJDNS, PHB's Mathematical Mesh, and so on... Having your own server or cluster that your own devices connect to for anonymization, identity, syncing, federation, etc, would simplify so much.