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Wonderful articulation. But I suggest that internet is 'centralized' not due to any technological function, but due to the nature of information, particularly

Wonderful articulation. But I suggest that internet is 'centralized' not due to any technological function, but due to the nature of information, particularly the economics and business of information. The 'protocol' used to pass information from A-B, were it changed to something better, would not yield what the author is suggesting. Google 'would still have all our stuff' - I believe. When 'individuals' can 'run services' from a variety of physical locales, with robustness - we will see more decentralization, I think. I believe this will happen probably by accident, gradually, as 'more tech' creeps into our homes, one day, most people will have enough 'gear' to run some kind of service from home/small office - and other places. Finally - despite the obvious failings of HTTP ... incumbency is what it is. I'll be we're stuck with it for a very, very long time. If a powerful enough entity decided to change that - like Google AND Amazon together, or the US Government, or the Chinese Government ... that could change. Funny enough I think it's China that's best positioned to do it. They have the wherewithal and the tech momentum, they could do it by 'fiat' and in 10 years implement some kind of 'new, better network' that we'd all eventually move to. Hey - America is still using 'swipe cards' and doesn't even use 'smart cards' though they've been in use for 40 years around the world :)

caymanbruce 9y ago
No. The Chinese government will fancy a 'centralized' internet that the government has total control. It will try as hard as it could to make sure the internet is 'centralized' and dismantle anything that is distributed or P2P. Some ISP in China doesn't even allow you to use a public IP. So I think this IPFS thing is most likely a huge threat to the GFW(Great Firewall) system of China. I hope this thing can eventually tear down the entire effort of the Internet censorship in China.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  I didn't mean to say that they would do something 'decentralized' - of course they wouldn't. But possibly something 'better' than HTTP. One of the things about the net, is that it's transactionally open. There's no inherent identity/or security, it was grafted on with SSL - 'kind of'. I suggest it might have been better if identity were required to even make connections, to avoid many kinds of attacks. Hopefully, it could be done in an unbureaucratic manner, also wherein 'identities' can remain de-facto anonymous. My main point was that 'http' is kind of old, but we're stuck with it unless a 'major power' does something about it.
  - caymanbruce 9y ago
    I know what you mean. But this 'better' than HTTP thing would only be a dream in China. Most websites, including some very big websites in China, have no concern about security. It will take longer than you can ever imagine for them to embrace SSL.

caymanbruce 9y ago

No. The Chinese government will fancy a 'centralized' internet that the government has total control. It will try as hard as it could to make sure the internet is 'centralized' and dismantle anything that is distributed or P2P. Some ISP in China doesn't even allow you to use a public IP. So I think this IPFS thing is most likely a huge threat to the GFW(Great Firewall) system of China. I hope this thing can eventually tear down the entire effort of the Internet censorship in China.

alexasmyths 9y ago
I didn't mean to say that they would do something 'decentralized' - of course they wouldn't. But possibly something 'better' than HTTP. One of the things about the net, is that it's transactionally open. There's no inherent identity/or security, it was grafted on with SSL - 'kind of'. I suggest it might have been better if identity were required to even make connections, to avoid many kinds of attacks. Hopefully, it could be done in an unbureaucratic manner, also wherein 'identities' can remain de-facto anonymous. My main point was that 'http' is kind of old, but we're stuck with it unless a 'major power' does something about it.
- caymanbruce 9y ago
  I know what you mean. But this 'better' than HTTP thing would only be a dream in China. Most websites, including some very big websites in China, have no concern about security. It will take longer than you can ever imagine for them to embrace SSL.