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I've noticed the debate around (de)centralization always seems to focus on purely technical issues, or on economic issues (which are technicalities of another s

I've noticed the debate around (de)centralization always seems to focus on purely technical issues, or on economic issues (which are technicalities of another sort). In other words, it's always the following two points that are debated: 1. Economies of Scale 2. Network Properties (robustness, scalability, latency, etc.) It seems to me that a crucial element is missing from these analyses: organizational policy. All other things being equal (which they may not be), it seems like decentralization appeals to those trying to restrict top-down control. Historically, this has been an ideological thing (e.g. bittorrent's copyleft slant), but more recently I've seen mainstream endorsement of concepts such as "flat hierarchy", "distributed workforce", "collaborative work", etc. Interestingly, I don't see this discourse being picked up by decentralization evangelists, and I'm not sure what to make of that. Off the cuff, it seems like decentralized storage tech has a compelling story to tell about small distributed teams, working in a loose, peer-to-peer organizational structure. In this context, my mind immediately goes to the functional centralization of cloud storage. In general, the Cloud tries to concentrate control over computing resources in a single department (i.e. the devops team). But what happens when a bunch of freelancers collaborate on a project-by-project basis? From what I've seen, either (1) they use cloud providers, but the account is under the client's name or (2) they use some kind of SaaS solution with support for sharing or other forms of collaboration. With decentralized storage, it seems like a "bring your own cloud" approach is possible in principle, where these freelancers would pool resources (storage, compute, etc.). Are there any pain-points here? Is there perhaps a business problem that needs solving? The question for me is whether these new patterns of collaboration are really becoming a thing, or whether it's a fad amongst business-school graduates. At any rate, this comment is an invitation for y'all to opine on the subject. I feel like a good analysis of organizational policy could help us decide whether a decentralized web is economically viable, but I'm kinda stumped.

omginternets 6y ago
Addendum: I think I could get excited about FileCoin if it allowed me to pool storage with friends and colleagues. I've been wanting to have a distributed hacker-garage for a while [0]. Importantly, I want it to be independent of any cloud provider because (1) it's hard to freely experiment/prototype when you have to keep track of billing and (2) functional centralization makes the AWS/GCE admin de facto responsible for everything running under the account. This is great for large enterprises that want to virtualize their IT department, but it really goes against the grain for hackers, freelancers, and -- IMHO -- startup founders. Returning to Filecoin, I feel like all the *coin ventures make the same fundamental mistake of over-estimating how much we care about money. I really don't care about pimping out my hard-drive for a couple of cents. I'm motivated by gains on the order of several hundred to a couple of thousand dollars. The counter-argument I usually hear is that there will be more interest in developing nations, but then I don't want to store my data in e.g. Pakistan. I want data for pet projects in my own hacker-garage, and I want production data close to the end-user. /rant [0] Incidentally, I'm working on a project to do exactly this. It's a way of clustering a set of computers over the internet to produce a virtual cloud. It would be super cool to use FileCoin as a block storage layer in this context, but restricted to the hardware we own.
- fwip 6y ago
  I've been keeping my eyes on https://cobox.cloud/ https://cobox.cloud/ - it's run by some very smart people who have had their brains in the decentralization (not blockchain) space for a while now. The alpha already lets you do what you're talking about, but I haven't used it yet and so I can't speak to its current stability.
- krrrh 6y ago
  This speaks to the disingenuity of a lot of the decentralization talk in the crypto space. The Beaker browser and the hyperdrive protocol (formerly DAT) is an interesting case study. It has a level of maturity and delivers on many of the ideas that helped filecoin and other token-financed projects raise hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is relatively obscure and I don’t think I know anyone who has used it other than the people I’ve encouraged to check it out. If there were actual demand for dweb technology then it and other projects like it should be getting a lot more attention since it’s a free and relatively user friendly platform compared to services that require managing token exchange risk, accounting, and hassle. https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/
ChainOfFools 6y ago
a classic essay discussing the real ground truth problems of decentralized anything is by Jo Freeman, called the tyranny of structurelessness [0]. though most of the punches land toward the end, it is a fascinating and short read, in which she dissects, with the sober disappointment of a former optimistic evangelist, exactly why structureless ("decentralized" before that term became vogue) movements are never what they claim to be, and indeed cannot be. why? because structureless coordination of groups above a handful members doesn't scale beyond the achievement of the simplest kinds of goals, such as consciousness-raising (or, in crypto-promoter terms, spreading "adoption"). any group objective requiring specialization of labor, coordination of resources and responsibility inevitably succumbs to the insidious creep of informal, but officially disavaowed structural networks of insiders. it is especially pernicious for newcomers, who have been heavily messaged about "decentralization" or "structurelessness" and engage themselves with the groups identity without any awareness of these cryptic back channel networks that actually govern its operation. only after they are committed do they slowly find out there really is a hierarchy and a command structure. i highly recommend a quick read for anyone considering the merits of a given groups' claims of being decentralized. [0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
- omginternets 6y ago
  I'm familiar with this essay, and agree with most of its conclusions. However, I am not convinced it is exactly applicable to the situation I have in mind. Freeman's point pertains to extreme decentralization of organizational policy, i.e. the flat hierarchy. These are arguably not even organizations; the essence of organization is precisely hierarchy! I'm more interested in organizations that do have some degree of centralization. My hypothetical freelancers are certainly not disorganized. What I'm trying to grasp is the conditions under which any group -- especially one with centralized policymaking -- may seek decentralized infrastructure. In other words: when does decentralized infrastructure serve the goals of a well-organized group?
  - ChainOfFools 6y ago
    I believe such infrastructure is better thought of as distributed, rather than decentralized. decentralization is a tendency to resist centralizing forces, it is not an intentional policy of a group. as soon as an identifiable organ in the organization is charged with twiddling the policy knobs that govern control over group resource access, this organ is now distributing this access and it can no longer be considered decentralization. the paradox is simply this: decentralization implies the absence of a decentralizer. there can be no "center of decentralization." I contend that the term is much closer to incantation than implementation in practice.

omginternets 6y ago

Addendum: I think I could get excited about FileCoin if it allowed me to pool storage with friends and colleagues. I've been wanting to have a distributed hacker-garage for a while [0]. Importantly, I want it to be independent of any cloud provider because (1) it's hard to freely experiment/prototype when you have to keep track of billing and (2) functional centralization makes the AWS/GCE admin de facto responsible for everything running under the account. This is great for large enterprises that want to virtualize their IT department, but it really goes against the grain for hackers, freelancers, and -- IMHO -- startup founders. Returning to Filecoin, I feel like all the *coin ventures make the same fundamental mistake of over-estimating how much we care about money. I really don't care about pimping out my hard-drive for a couple of cents. I'm motivated by gains on the order of several hundred to a couple of thousand dollars. The counter-argument I usually hear is that there will be more interest in developing nations, but then I don't want to store my data in e.g. Pakistan. I want data for pet projects in my own hacker-garage, and I want production data close to the end-user. /rant [0] Incidentally, I'm working on a project to do exactly this. It's a way of clustering a set of computers over the internet to produce a virtual cloud. It would be super cool to use FileCoin as a block storage layer in this context, but restricted to the hardware we own.

fwip 6y ago
I've been keeping my eyes on https://cobox.cloud/ https://cobox.cloud/ - it's run by some very smart people who have had their brains in the decentralization (not blockchain) space for a while now. The alpha already lets you do what you're talking about, but I haven't used it yet and so I can't speak to its current stability.
krrrh 6y ago
This speaks to the disingenuity of a lot of the decentralization talk in the crypto space. The Beaker browser and the hyperdrive protocol (formerly DAT) is an interesting case study. It has a level of maturity and delivers on many of the ideas that helped filecoin and other token-financed projects raise hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is relatively obscure and I don’t think I know anyone who has used it other than the people I’ve encouraged to check it out. If there were actual demand for dweb technology then it and other projects like it should be getting a lot more attention since it’s a free and relatively user friendly platform compared to services that require managing token exchange risk, accounting, and hassle. https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/

ChainOfFools 6y ago

a classic essay discussing the real ground truth problems of decentralized anything is by Jo Freeman, called the tyranny of structurelessness [0]. though most of the punches land toward the end, it is a fascinating and short read, in which she dissects, with the sober disappointment of a former optimistic evangelist, exactly why structureless ("decentralized" before that term became vogue) movements are never what they claim to be, and indeed cannot be. why? because structureless coordination of groups above a handful members doesn't scale beyond the achievement of the simplest kinds of goals, such as consciousness-raising (or, in crypto-promoter terms, spreading "adoption"). any group objective requiring specialization of labor, coordination of resources and responsibility inevitably succumbs to the insidious creep of informal, but officially disavaowed structural networks of insiders. it is especially pernicious for newcomers, who have been heavily messaged about "decentralization" or "structurelessness" and engage themselves with the groups identity without any awareness of these cryptic back channel networks that actually govern its operation. only after they are committed do they slowly find out there really is a hierarchy and a command structure. i highly recommend a quick read for anyone considering the merits of a given groups' claims of being decentralized. [0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

omginternets 6y ago
I'm familiar with this essay, and agree with most of its conclusions. However, I am not convinced it is exactly applicable to the situation I have in mind. Freeman's point pertains to extreme decentralization of organizational policy, i.e. the flat hierarchy. These are arguably not even organizations; the essence of organization is precisely hierarchy! I'm more interested in organizations that do have some degree of centralization. My hypothetical freelancers are certainly not disorganized. What I'm trying to grasp is the conditions under which any group -- especially one with centralized policymaking -- may seek decentralized infrastructure. In other words: when does decentralized infrastructure serve the goals of a well-organized group?
- ChainOfFools 6y ago
  I believe such infrastructure is better thought of as distributed, rather than decentralized. decentralization is a tendency to resist centralizing forces, it is not an intentional policy of a group. as soon as an identifiable organ in the organization is charged with twiddling the policy knobs that govern control over group resource access, this organ is now distributing this access and it can no longer be considered decentralization. the paradox is simply this: decentralization implies the absence of a decentralizer. there can be no "center of decentralization." I contend that the term is much closer to incantation than implementation in practice.