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Brilliant article. There's a great list of current-gen distributed things towards the end, but we still need people who make things to keep making non-centrali

by seiji 13y ago

Brilliant article. There's a great list of current-gen distributed things towards the end, but we still need people who make things to keep making non-centralized usable platforms. Get us out of gmail-istan and fadbook-istan and hn-monsterator-istans. Give us our nerdependence back.

mwcampbell 13y ago
> Give us our nerdependence back. Sure, that's a good first step. But then how do we get our families on board?
- seiji 13y ago
  I don't follow? I think you're thinking it means quitting jobs and working unsupported? It doesn't have to go that far. Try making things in your free time under fast-feedback constraints. Post half completed things to HN, tell the haters to fuckoff, and email your supporters to build up a coalition of the not willing to be datamined anymore. We know they know more about us than we know they know. We need to truncate their abilities before they have mind penetrating radar.
  - mwcampbell 13y ago
    I wasn't clear. I mean that eventually, we'll want our non-hacker family and friends to leave Facebook, Gmail, etc. and join us on the decentralized Internet.
    - seiji 13y ago
      Oooh. I see. That's why I italicized useful in the original comment. We haven't cracked usable distributed systems for the masses except for the original Skype system. I don't have any answers here, but we can abstract away the scary parts, throw some memes and pictures that timeout on top, then take over the world.
mtgx 13y ago
Google has been relatively "good" to us, the users, so far, and they've even been our allies in some cases(SOPA, ITU). But make no mistake, when the Internet will start a trend towards fully decentralized/more anonymous services, they will become our enemy, because that will endanger their very way of making a revenue. If I were a Google boss I'd try to start making money from other business models besides ads as soon as possible, possibly from hardware, like Apple. I think they're already planning this to some extent with Motorola, Google Glass, and even Google Fiber. But they need to hurry up. That trend might arrive sooner than they expect (within 5 years). Facebook is already dead. They just don't know it yet (it takes a while for the market inertia to stop).
- gizmo686 13y ago
  I agree with your point, but think your wording sidesteps the issue. Google has been our allies because the same things that we were against (IE a closed internet) directly endanger their revenue. They won't change their attitude when they see a huge threat to their revenue, although we may notice that their motives have always been revenue, and that does not necessarily align with ours. Additionally, I'm not sure decentralized/anonymous services are necessarily a bad thing for Google. At the moment they have alot of competition from site like Facebook, and online shops and such. However, they are still the gateway to the internet, and are probably in the best posistion to continue to provide targeted advertising in the new age of anonymous internet. Consider the value of having your shop get a prefered listing everytime someone searches for shoes. The value of this would go up when your ability to do directed advertising through other means goes down. Also, even with anonymous services, information still leaks, and the larger you are the better you can take advantage of it.
  - nine_k 13y ago
    BTW why a rise of anonymous private communication would mean an end to the existing web, as indexed by Google? A lot of things are still perfectly OK to do in public. Consider open information sites as Wikipedia, most business information sites, and even most online commerce.
  - deleted 13y ago

by seiji 13y ago

mwcampbell 13y ago

> Give us our nerdependence back. Sure, that's a good first step. But then how do we get our families on board?

seiji 13y ago
I don't follow? I think you're thinking it means quitting jobs and working unsupported? It doesn't have to go that far. Try making things in your free time under fast-feedback constraints. Post half completed things to HN, tell the haters to fuckoff, and email your supporters to build up a coalition of the not willing to be datamined anymore. We know they know more about us than we know they know. We need to truncate their abilities before they have mind penetrating radar.
- mwcampbell 13y ago
  I wasn't clear. I mean that eventually, we'll want our non-hacker family and friends to leave Facebook, Gmail, etc. and join us on the decentralized Internet.
  - seiji 13y ago
    Oooh. I see. That's why I italicized useful in the original comment. We haven't cracked usable distributed systems for the masses except for the original Skype system. I don't have any answers here, but we can abstract away the scary parts, throw some memes and pictures that timeout on top, then take over the world.

mtgx 13y ago

Google has been relatively "good" to us, the users, so far, and they've even been our allies in some cases(SOPA, ITU). But make no mistake, when the Internet will start a trend towards fully decentralized/more anonymous services, they will become our enemy, because that will endanger their very way of making a revenue. If I were a Google boss I'd try to start making money from other business models besides ads as soon as possible, possibly from hardware, like Apple. I think they're already planning this to some extent with Motorola, Google Glass, and even Google Fiber. But they need to hurry up. That trend might arrive sooner than they expect (within 5 years). Facebook is already dead. They just don't know it yet (it takes a while for the market inertia to stop).

gizmo686 13y ago
I agree with your point, but think your wording sidesteps the issue. Google has been our allies because the same things that we were against (IE a closed internet) directly endanger their revenue. They won't change their attitude when they see a huge threat to their revenue, although we may notice that their motives have always been revenue, and that does not necessarily align with ours. Additionally, I'm not sure decentralized/anonymous services are necessarily a bad thing for Google. At the moment they have alot of competition from site like Facebook, and online shops and such. However, they are still the gateway to the internet, and are probably in the best posistion to continue to provide targeted advertising in the new age of anonymous internet. Consider the value of having your shop get a prefered listing everytime someone searches for shoes. The value of this would go up when your ability to do directed advertising through other means goes down. Also, even with anonymous services, information still leaks, and the larger you are the better you can take advantage of it.
- nine_k 13y ago
  BTW why a rise of anonymous private communication would mean an end to the existing web, as indexed by Google? A lot of things are still perfectly OK to do in public. Consider open information sites as Wikipedia, most business information sites, and even most online commerce.
- deleted 13y ago