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Can't believe I'm wading into a "bubble" thread:/ Here are my thoughts. Disclaimer: I'm just some guy. epistemological confidence: low. There may be a bubble
by seagreen 11y ago
Can't believe I'm wading into a "bubble" thread:/
Here are my thoughts. Disclaimer: I'm just some guy. epistemological confidence: low.
There may be a bubble in consumer tech. There isn't a bubble in tech in general.
Consumer tech is weird right now because consumers are so weak. Bob the plumber has a laptop (good!), he's using a WIMP interface (not good!), but he knows a little Excel (great!). All in all he's a reasonably empowered internet citizen with a real internet presence.
He closes the lid. BLAMMO! He now has has zero internet presence under his control. Not a single thread, not a single cron job, nothing. He's lost the most basic information organization functions: "share", "receive", "do at this time", "do repeatedly", etc.
Instead he has to rely on others for all those functions. These are really basic functions. Like "baby food" level. If he's so helpless his computers can't handle something as simple as "do something at 5:00 tomorrow" reliably, of course he's going to get taken advantage of.
Pinterest, Dropbox, AirBNB, Slack, Evernote, Facebook, LinkedIN ... all exist because users don't have servers. If personal servers take off, consumer tech will pop. Of course, normal people aren't going own UNIX servers ever. Sandstorm though . . . that's a lot easier to set up than a Linux box.
(I don't think tech in general is a bubble though. "Software is eating the world" seems entirely accurate to me.)
- Dwolb 11y agoAlthough a bit tangential to the article, you make a really good point. There has to be some room in the market for plug-n-play servers with 0-maintenance web apps that are present in the home instead of a public cloud. It'd be really tough to compete without the massive consolidation benefits of the big players. Moreover, it'd be tough to position the product because it's essentially the same service, but with privacy benefits.
- seagreen 11y ago> Tangential to the article You got me. Hopefully my point is interesting regardless though -- basically that some companies like Pinterest are vulnerable in ways that others like Square aren't. > Moreover, it'd be tough to position the product because it's essentially the same service, but with privacy benefits. Oh man, I'm glad you brought this up. I think one of the only interesting insights I have here is that _the personal server stuff is totally tangential to privacy_. Personal servers are cool because they're useful and technically sweet -- I can move from querying my friend's review of a software product, to looking at his code using that software, to reading his blog posts about it, all without leaving the same datastore (on his side) or the same UI (on mine). Right now that would involve searching Acme Software Co's website, then GitHub, then Blogger, which is a plain worse process. EDIT: spelling
- walterbell 11y agoHave you looked at the Synology NAS+mobile app ecosystem or the OSS clone XPenology?
- seagreen 11y agoNot very much, know of a good "beginner's guide to NASes"? Honestly though, while I'm sure they're cool, I'm not sure NASes will do much good here. Most people need something as simple to use and set up as Evernote or Gmail.
- walterbell 11y agoThis review claims the setup is reasonable and even mobile app acccess works, http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/10/synology-gets-even-better-w-version-5-0-why-every-mac-ios-user-should-have-a-diskstation/ http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/10/synology-gets-even-better-w-ve...