Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
ruben.verborgh.org
Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
1–10 of 295 posts
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#2Solid looks to be trying to reimplement what platforms like Ethereum are already building. The same ethos is there and this is very well written but I wonder if the Solid project just missed that when doing their research. Hopefully all of their efforts don't go to waste and they can extend some of their work to the broader decentralized web community.
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#3[deleted]
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#4I've read a bit about Solid in the past, but never quite understood how it will handle different data models. Does it force social data to all look the same (as in, have a predefined set of fields)? If not, how do apps built on it interoperate?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for projects like this. I think it's wonderful. I just never really got how the apps will work with the same data without being forced into a particular data model (which seems like it would limit what you could do).
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#5"In order to regain freedom and control over the digital aspects of our lives"
Nothing proves his point more than:
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#6The design, typography, and diagrams in this article are wonderful. I like it when people pay this much attention to detail!
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#7"In order to regain freedom and control over the digital aspects of our lives" Nothing proves his point more than:
This feels like the same argument:
"Al Gore claims he's an environmentalist, yet he flies using his personal gas guzzling plane."
And yeah, it's an ad hominem. "Is a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument"
You can most definitely use centralized servers to disseminate decentralization. I'm pretty sure https://ipfs.io started as a github project and on a monolithic server backed by cloudflare. That doesn't dismiss them in the least - considering they now heavily dogfood.
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#8I think the part ignored by so many is the need to decentralize the computers into the home. I'm not talking meshes or shared resources. For the majority of use cases, we don't need distributed storage, compute, etc. Just start making these self-hosted "servers", "data pods", etc as easy to install as desktop software and make it clear that they are inaccessible when the computer is off. People that aren't already will gravitate towards at least one always-on machine in their house. Modern societies have reasonable upload speeds and electricity/network uptime to support it. Sure, things like ISP firewall/NAT and dynamic IPs are a bit of a barrier, but you can have volunteers help with relays.
For example, I can easily fire up a Tor onion service on my never-turns-off home desktop computer and reach my stuff from anywhere. Why can't I reach my friends' stuff the same way? Because, to use business-speak, there's nothing "turnkey". It's something I've been pondering and working on. Sure, the bigger players may have to be in DCs, have more stringent uptime requirements, and distribute their bandwidth/workload more. But for most of us, desktop software and web-of-trust style connections could go a long way so long as the front of the software has a FB feel (e.g. a feed, messages, etc). We can tackle discovery, searching, aggregation, offloading, etc later.
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#9Decentralized web can be downloaded and backed up by one entity. Then, you can go to that centralized entity to enjoy all the content.
If we still don't have decentralization, it's because it is not as easy.
Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
#10I can't escape the feeling that SOLID will be at best neutral but likely will make things worse. Some of the diagrams show more companies having access to your data where it will continue to be mined, sold, etc. If you control storage but not execution it seems like you control nothing.