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HBO's 'Silicon Valley' Joins The Push For A Decentralized Web (ieee.org)
Tekla Perry writes:
HBO's fictional Silicon Valley character Richard Hendricks sets out to reinvent the Internet into something decentralized. ["What if we used all those phones to build a massive network...we could build a completely decentralized version of our current Internet with no firewalls, no tolls, no government regulation, no spying. Information would be totally free in every sense of the word."] That sound a lot like what Brewster Kahle, Tim Berners-Lee, and Vint Cerf have been calling the decentralized web. Kahle tells IEEE Spectrum about how closely HBO's vision matches his own, and why he's happy to have this light shined on the movement.
In 2015 Kahle pointed out the current web isn't private. "People, corporations, countries can spy on what you are reading. And they do." But in a decentralized web, "the bits will be distributed -- across the net -- so no one can track the readers of a site from a single point or connection."
He tells IEEE Spectrum that though the idea is hard to execute, a lot of people are already working on it. "I recently talked to a couple of engineers working for Mozilla, and brought up the idea of decentralizing the web. They said, 'Oh, we have a group working on that, are you thinking about that as well?'"
In 2015 Kahle pointed out the current web isn't private. "People, corporations, countries can spy on what you are reading. And they do." But in a decentralized web, "the bits will be distributed -- across the net -- so no one can track the readers of a site from a single point or connection."
He tells IEEE Spectrum that though the idea is hard to execute, a lot of people are already working on it. "I recently talked to a couple of engineers working for Mozilla, and brought up the idea of decentralizing the web. They said, 'Oh, we have a group working on that, are you thinking about that as well?'"
Looks like it's similar to bittorrent, that's also a de-centralized service.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
> But in a decentralized web, "the bits will be distributed -- across the net"
Khazza, EDonkey, Gnutella, BitTorrent, and the like just called. They'd like their idea back.
i really hate that i have to use the centralized "web-server", and not have an option to run my own, we could even come up with something like a directory so we dont have to use the centralized "mail-server"...
The internet (which is not the web, the web is built on top of the internet) *is* "decentralized". It was built that way.
Take a drink whenever Tim Berners-Lee is mentioned in the summary.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
...and ended up where we are here.
You, the person reading this right now, is on Slashdot. According to Alexa, it's one of the top 5,500 most visited websites on the internet, so even despite its downturn of late, there's still millions of people who visit this website every month.
Why are you all not on Usenet? You're all technical enough to download and configure Pan or Agent, and if your ISP doesn't provide Usenet access, a 5GB block on Blocknews costs $2.75 and will provide years of text-based discussion. There are plenty of technical categories, and plenty of them have actual users on them.
But you're on Slashdot.
You are here because millions of other people are here, and because not every NNTP server replicates every message, everywhere, ever. You are here because the value of information is determined by the person posting that information, and for some people, posting "you are all cows", "only luddites use nntp without apps", or "Fr33 V1@gra" is deemed valuable, while the vast majority of readers disagree. Spam filtering can only happen with someone deciding 'this is spam' and 'this is not spam', and boom, there is the beginning centralization.
Why are you not on Retroshare?
It has forum-like functions, email-like functions, IRC-like functions, and even Limewire-like functions and is 100% decentralized and relies on PGP keys for connectivity, so everything is encrypted.
You're not on it because getting messages to proliferate is a problem, especially if you only have a few friends who aren't themselves connected. You're not on it because firewall configuration is a pain, even if you know how to port forward. You're not on it because 2/3 of the discussion is key exchanges, and the way many people get started is in the new users room which is, essentially, centralized. Or, maybe you are there...and hopefully you're not one of the people who post things in the forums which are actually-racist or providing bomb-making tutorials or degradingly sexually explicit.
Even at that, what's to stop a TLA agency or RIAA lawyer from just being another user who's a part of the system? Decentralization combined with equal access invalidates the viability of the goal to minimize access by undesirable parties, as it's only a matter of time before "Joe Blough the dude who likes to discuss fishing and parasailing...who also happens to be in MI6" joins. Blocking government issues IP addresses is easy enough, but you're back to needing a central authority to provide that.
Without the commons, a project never gets any traction. With the commons, we end up with Facebook, but without the filtering tools that keep it generally free of dick pics (or a means to at least hide them).
No matter how you slice it, the network effect is inherently necessary to make an internet service work, and attaining critical mass of a decentralized (and presumably free/Free) communications platform is something that has yet to be done successfully. After all, you're not on Usenet or Retroshare. You're still on Slashdot.
Last year There was a conference on this subject. More at https://www.decentralizedweb.n...
no, i dont want to participate in a mesh network with my neighbors the pedophiles.
nor do i want to have a "no rules" internet because what happens, like in "flat" hierachies of companies where there are no managers, is that the biggest asshole bully tends to gain power by abusing people.
the modern world is built on rules. stop on red. dont go 100mph in a 30mph zone. dont shoot people in the face and steal all their shit.
someone has to enforce those rules against the small percentage of people who are psychopaths - otherwise the psychopaths will literally murder millions of people.
The app Signal is a great start. I use it instead of Facebook and other social media.
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7522219498
https://lwn.net/Articles/657583/
Until Google repents for fucking over the home server operators, I won't be holding my breath. Or rather, who knows, after 5-10 years of scheming how to exploit and dominate the hell out of a decentralized web, our sell-out overlords might actually bestow us with some reasonable 1990s level internet fun capabilities.
Whatever...
Assuming there was interest, and you were able to get the network up and running, it would have to be encrpyted to protect privacy. Then it would be considered a paradise for criminals by the media. If it wasn't encrypted, then it would be considered a paradise for data mining companies. Other companies would see the opportunity to offer route owners franchises and memberships to create sub-networks where they could mine all the data passing through, maybe even offer bonus points and discounts on other products for the amount of traffic going through.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
We need an entity like Google to do this - they already have the infrastructure in place and the resources. However, a system based on privacy and providing everyone with anonymity would break their business model. I hope someone can get to Sergey Brin and Larry Page with the idea of how they could change the world in a good way by making a decentralized "Internet 2." Maybe they are rich enough to finally do the right thing instead of only talking about it.
I'm not a religious person, but the point of the story is to illustrate a point about human nature: Most people want a hierarchical, centralized structure, for good or for ill. It, apparently, is just how we're wired. If you create something that's free-form, decentralized, some people will call that 'anarchistic', and some other people will insist that 'order' be imposed upon it, and they will take steps to make it centralized, over the objections of everyone else. We've seen this happen with the Internet, and with Bitcoin, as a couple examples.
Furthermore: criminals are just as likely to want to impose some sort of 'order' on something that can benefit them as governments or any other group might. Stet?
Here's what I believe would happen with a 'Free and open Internet 2p0', made up of a mesh volunteer networked nodes:
That should be modded up. People want freedom from choice. They will always end up voting for the fascist. Hitler (yeah, I said it! Fuck off if you don't like it!) and Trump and Clinton are not flukes. It's a very predictable trend. Even the civil rights movement has been taken over by right wingers who want more censorship. They ruined everything when they killed Kennedy. The U.S. was a great rising star until then, and now it's been all downhill ever since, and Reagan's Alzheimers became an epidemic on a national scale. Who really thought that movie Idiocracy would be so prophetic, and was more about the present than the future?
Try IPFS.
It's not a decentralised web, but it's a good start. It has the potentially to completely decentralize all static content, and with pervasive caching that could greatly reduce network traffic and improve response times too.
The core of Richard's invention is his compression algorithm. Like warp drives and light sabers, it is tech which cannot work as described because of conflicts with well established theory. (Google "shannon information" for details). It doesn't hurt the story, stimulates the imagination, and once you get the joke improves the overall humor.
A "decentralized Internet" is another joke, because IP was inherently decentralized in concept. That plays well with Richard's algorithm which effectively offers warp speed transmission on every route, it will be fun to see what they do with it.
People seem to engage in very black and white thinking about decentralising the Internet.
On the one hand, you have a bunch of hopeless idealists who think it MUST work because it's THE RIGHT THING TO DO, without considering the potential negative aspects and pitfalls which will ultimately doom the endeavour.
On the other hand, you have a bunch of pessimists who think it is doomed to fail because look at all those other systems and think of all those flaws, but who don't try to think of compromises that could work.
I look at it this way: The world itself is physically decentralised. We have multiple self-governing nations. Indeed, nationalist and isolationist attitudes have been on the rise recently. Within nations, it is common to have multiple levels of government, with local decisions taken locally. Collaborations occur and dissolve in a fairly organic manner over the years.
People's social interactions have, by and large, always been somewhat decentralised and based on making intelligent judgements about the people around us. We don't all rely on some central authority to determine trust, for instance. Though we are bound to some extent by the societies in which we find ourselves to determine the nature of our interactions, we are not directly controlled by them. Even if we live in a society where we'll disappear courtesy of the secret police if we do something that's not considered acceptable, that is being enforced by decentralised humans in a decentralised world.
Businesses operating in the physical world are part of a fairly decentralised system of commerce and industry. The relationship between customer and business is decentralised. Although there are central authorities which dictate laws and regulations, these are generally implemented in a decentralised manner, with the various disparate businesses putting them in place and inspections and audits being conducted within this decentralised reality by decentralised agents of the central authority.
I think it should be feasible to build a network which is inherently decentralised while also facilitating the organic creation and destruction of regulatory structures akin to those found in meatspace. I also think this will be necessary to enable broad adoption and social acceptance.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that personal data is privacy. Privacy is having ones need covered regarding ones data, or, rather ones personal life, period.
So.. privacy is not a meaningful concept if being about storing or handling personal data (!) Simply handling personal data might be theft or worse for all we know.
Don't fuck this up, again!
I guess the truth hurts. The old "down mod = disagree" in action.
And the negative moderation exactly proves my point, thankyouverymuch! Nobody wants to hear the truth about themselves.
At least to the extent I understand what Yarvin actually wants Urbit to do, which I'm not entirely sure I do...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
The other projects don't even cover the basics of the vision, only MaidSafe is developing the full scope of a decentralized internet. Completely autonomous, fully distributed, shared resources, anonymous, and secured by design. The security landscape will change forever because they remove the servers from the internet. No servers, only pure peer to peer distributed internet, anonymous with broadband like speed. All files stored in the cloud forever, without any recurrent cost, all communication encrypted by default. Currency-wise: no centralization, instantaneous transactions, no fees (forever, their security model doesn't require it), and anonymous, paid by resource served. And this is possible because it is NOT blockchain based, their consensus system is based on xor based close group consensus. Pied Piper's description on the show is word by word the description of the SafeNetwork. For more information read: Article in TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2014/07... MaidSafe and the safe network explained using bitcoin terminology: https://safe-network-explained... MaidSafe's on Google TechTalks in 2006: https://youtu.be/fLA77zxk-vA About MaidSafe's XOR distance routing: https://youtu.be/Lr9FJRDcNzk?l... Projects like IPFS are not anonymous.
... we then all log into the centralized facebook.
The idea is great, but could we start with the simple things, and use IRC instead of whatsapp, and finger instead of twitter?
Who needs "official" censor-controlled domain names when we can define our own systems for free? You have to be careful though, the way they get around this is by using "net neutrality" to authorize a filter combing all the data that the big corporate media can't touch. You guys may think you're for "net neutrality" the ideal but you should be diametrically opposed to "net neutrality" the political issue. You're being used.
You really need to redpill yourself before waltzing in here like a drunken idiot. Trump is your only chance to live.
i dont know for sure but im guessing in an area of 5000 people in nearby apartment complexes, 1 or 2 of them are probably pedophiles for whom the internet is a giant mental crack pipe. look up a sex offender registry some time youd be surprised how prevalent these people are.
You'd have better served your reader by directing him or her to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.
That's an in-joke for the information theory cognoscenti.
Who cares.
Called Tor hidden services
What's being developed in this show is being built and they are rather far along. Go to www.maidsafe.net to check the companies website and head over to the forum to ask any questions you have safenetforum.org.
...but I would prefer no trolls.
Learn about Maidsafe's SafeNetwork. They don't use IP protocol after the first bootstrap. Network routing is based on XOR distance, and it is completely distributed, not just "decentralized". The real Pied Piper is SafeNetwork. Check the videos. The SAFE Network from First Principles: https://www.youtube.com/playli... GoogleTech talks 2006: https://youtu.be/fLA77zxk-vA
Maximum one share a person, and just manage it democratically.
Ensure the cooperative never makes a profit, and the prices are kept to a minimum. If expansion is required we just loan the cooperative some money and payback at an interest rate pegged to inflation.
Excluding Government management, and PLC managers would probably be wise. If it gets built and operated like a pyramid that is where all the problems start, it has to be democratically managed.
If it works we could role the model out for all things, then I suppose we would have democracy finally.
It works for certain classes of useful applications, e.g., microblogging, and we have the research to back that claim up.
http://robertdick.org/publications/liu16jan.pdf
We have a prototype iOS app we're testing internally now. Plan public release in late summer with Android to follow. Get on our list if you want an email when it goes public.
Well that's what we've come to /.? Tech advice from actors? Next you people are going to be getting medical advice from some stupid medical drama on tv too.
P.S(and unrelated) Can you people stop quoting TV characters like they're real people.
It sounds like those are competing goals - if information is freely available then it cannot be private, if it's private then it cannot be free. Am I missing something?
I loved your alternative name for DISCUS. However, an algorithm that improves compression if you have multiple sources, doesn't equal Richard's. In the limiting case, any file can be compressed to a single bit if the only question is whether the only question open is whether it matches the file you have.