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Can Mesh Networks Save a Dying Web? (thenextweb.com)
From an anonymous reader:
"The web is dying, but mesh networks could save it," writes open source hacker Andre Staltz. He warns that Facebook, Google, and Amazon plan to "grow beyond browsers, creating new virtual contexts where data is created and shared," and predicts the next wave of walled gardens will be a "social internet" bypassing the web altogether. "The Web may die like most other technologies do, simply by becoming less attractive than newer technologies."
He wants to build a mobile mesh web that works with or without internet access to reach the four billion people currently offline, adding that all the tools we need are already in our hands: smartphones, peer-to-peer protocols, and mesh networks. His vision? "Novel peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS and Dat help replace HTTP and make the web a content-centered cyberspace... Browsers can be made to work like that, and although it's a small tweak to how the web works, it has massive effects on social structures in cyberspace... Now that we have experience with some of the intricacies of the social web, we can reinvent it to put people first without intermediate companies... We can actually beat the tech giants at this game by simply giving local and regional connectivity to people in developing countries. With mobile apps that are built mesh-first, the smartphones would make up self-organizing self-healing mobile ad-hoc networks... In internet-less regions, there is potential for scaling quickly, and through that, we can spawn a new industry around peer-to-peer wireless mesh networks."
He cites mega-projects "to rescue the web from the internet", which include progress on peer-to-peer and mesh networking protocols, followed by adoption on smartphones (and then a new wave of apps) -- plus a migration of existing web content to the new protocols, "to fix the overutilization of the wirenet and the underutilization of airnets, bringing balance to the wire-versus-air dichotomy, providing choice in how data should travel in each case...But it can only happen if the web takes a courageous step towards its next level."
He wants to build a mobile mesh web that works with or without internet access to reach the four billion people currently offline, adding that all the tools we need are already in our hands: smartphones, peer-to-peer protocols, and mesh networks. His vision? "Novel peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS and Dat help replace HTTP and make the web a content-centered cyberspace... Browsers can be made to work like that, and although it's a small tweak to how the web works, it has massive effects on social structures in cyberspace... Now that we have experience with some of the intricacies of the social web, we can reinvent it to put people first without intermediate companies... We can actually beat the tech giants at this game by simply giving local and regional connectivity to people in developing countries. With mobile apps that are built mesh-first, the smartphones would make up self-organizing self-healing mobile ad-hoc networks... In internet-less regions, there is potential for scaling quickly, and through that, we can spawn a new industry around peer-to-peer wireless mesh networks."
He cites mega-projects "to rescue the web from the internet", which include progress on peer-to-peer and mesh networking protocols, followed by adoption on smartphones (and then a new wave of apps) -- plus a migration of existing web content to the new protocols, "to fix the overutilization of the wirenet and the underutilization of airnets, bringing balance to the wire-versus-air dichotomy, providing choice in how data should travel in each case...But it can only happen if the web takes a courageous step towards its next level."
Old, basic and obviously forgotten.
Yes, yes. There's a reason Ted Nelson's Xanadu idea never panned out.
Whenever someone points out that the web suffers link-rot, they demonstrate that they're not thinking clearly about robustness in large distributed systems.
You don't have the choice between link-rot and utopia. Your choice is between a single centralised point of failure, or many points of 'partial failure'. Thankfully, the web gives us the second option. We even have archive.org to take the edge off. Unfortunately, of course, we now have silos, which take us back to the first option.
That's one of the problems IPFS addresses by making links based on a content hash, not the current storage location.
Eh? So if I make a correction, the address of the resource changes? On the web, you have the choice. e.g. on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System gives you the latest page, and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=InterPlanetary_File_System&oldid=818883368 will always give you the snapshot from the 6th of January 2018. Similar schemes exist on GitHub and BitBucket.
(Disclaimer: I'm just being snarky and don't really know much about Xanadu, or distributed databases, or IPFS. I'd be glad to be corrected.)