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>The two decentralized protocols with the most adoption by far are Bitcoin and BitTorrent. What about email? It's become quite centralised in practice, but it

>The two decentralized protocols with the most adoption by far are Bitcoin and BitTorrent. What about email? It's become quite centralised in practice, but it is ultimately a decentralised protocol, and it is used by pretty much everyone on the internet. And even in its semi-centralised form, it's nowhere near the walled garden of Facebook.

ivan_ah 10y ago
> What about email? That's a really good idea! Email is an good existing source of messaging and "identity." People can choose to participate in the "network" either using one of the big hosted providers, a privacy-oriented email host, and eventually over time, using self-hosted email. Project idea: what if all the social shit could be sent over email? You'd need to setup your email client to hide emails that represent the "data packets" for the social communications so they don't pollute your INBOX. A completely separate personal browsing interface (client side .js) would be used to browse the social stream you receive at your email address. It's already happening a bit like that with the "Social" tab in gmail, but instead of containing links to walled garden URLs, the proposed new "social email" packets will contain the full content and won't require access to any external servers. Perhaps we wouldn't even need a "central" browsing interface, since each social item can come with its own .js to render a simple UI adapted for the social item (e.g. message, photos, album, event, links). To make the picture more concrete, let's analyze the Event data type. Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending each of them a paragraph of invitation text, some images(<1MB), two RSVP links I'm going || Not going, and a [FWD] button. When Bob clicks "I'm going" Alice is notified by email. When Bob clicks [FWD] and sends to Charlie, and Charlie clicks "I'm going" Alice will be notified again. Social functionality. No central servers.
- type0 10y ago
  > Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending each of them a paragraph of invitation... Yeah, contrast it with reality where: Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending each of them invitation via Facebook.
  - andirk 10y ago
    Or: Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending them a smart contract between all of them containing 3 Bitcoin and she will only sign if they show up. And then they all split the amount in the address.

ivan_ah 10y ago

> What about email? That's a really good idea! Email is an good existing source of messaging and "identity." People can choose to participate in the "network" either using one of the big hosted providers, a privacy-oriented email host, and eventually over time, using self-hosted email. Project idea: what if all the social shit could be sent over email? You'd need to setup your email client to hide emails that represent the "data packets" for the social communications so they don't pollute your INBOX. A completely separate personal browsing interface (client side .js) would be used to browse the social stream you receive at your email address. It's already happening a bit like that with the "Social" tab in gmail, but instead of containing links to walled garden URLs, the proposed new "social email" packets will contain the full content and won't require access to any external servers. Perhaps we wouldn't even need a "central" browsing interface, since each social item can come with its own .js to render a simple UI adapted for the social item (e.g. message, photos, album, event, links). To make the picture more concrete, let's analyze the Event data type. Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending each of them a paragraph of invitation text, some images(<1MB), two RSVP links I'm going || Not going, and a [FWD] button. When Bob clicks "I'm going" Alice is notified by email. When Bob clicks [FWD] and sends to Charlie, and Charlie clicks "I'm going" Alice will be notified again. Social functionality. No central servers.

type0 10y ago
> Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending each of them a paragraph of invitation... Yeah, contrast it with reality where: Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending each of them invitation via Facebook.
- andirk 10y ago
  Or: Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending them a smart contract between all of them containing 3 Bitcoin and she will only sign if they show up. And then they all split the amount in the address.