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Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

economist.com

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Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#11

Post by chuhnk »

It's cyclical and this should be obvious to anyone in technology. We move between eras of centralisation and decentralisation. The internet started as a decentralised network in which we then built high capacity centralised systems at an accelerated rate. We're now about to shift back into a new era of decentralisation fuelled by edge/fog computing, IoT and p2p networks all on top of the existing infrastructure.

The point is that it only occurs when we have a specific need and a niche vertical to initially leverage it in. In one form it's bitcoin for payments. In another form its IoT and essentially sensor networks. You can imagine autonomous vehicles being a huge p2p network for speed as opposed to feeding all the data back to the cloud.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#12

Post by therealmarv »

x5n1 wrote: post #4
sverige wrote: post #3

The narrative for the last few years, at least in the mainstream media, is that Google Facebook Twitter Microsoft et al. are too big for anyone else to replace them. It's the old "inevitability" argument - if your new thing gets too big, they'll just buy you up. Let's hope people continue to try to create services that a big percentage of people use and then resist to sell to the big data companies.

I loved the web in the early mid-2000s. Web 2.0 so many startups, so many ideas, so many failures. It was great. Lots more hope than what is out there right now.

We are now in another part of the hype cycle for the web.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#13

Post by sverige »

doctorshady wrote: post #9
sverige wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at Facebook's Internet Lite plan for India. Which was a spectacular failure...

Right. My point was more that they're willing to go to some fairly extreme measures to try insuring their market dominance.

And it sounds like we share the hope that they'll never fully succeed.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#15

Post by rosser »

stephengillie wrote: post #14

Can the title be corrected? It has a plural noun leading into a singular verb. Unless we're supposed to parse "slew of startups" as singular...

> Unless we're supposed to parse "slew of startups" as singular...

Yes, that's how that works, grammatically. The noun in that sentence is the slew, which, in this instance, happens to be of startups.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#17

Post by doctorshady »

sverige wrote: post #13
doctorshady wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. My point was more that they're willing to go to some fairly extreme measures to try insuring their market dominance.

And it sounds like we share the hope that they'll never fully succeed.

Definitely can't disagree :) . I've had my reservations about the direction of the internet before, but a Facebook walled garden internet just sounds plain scary. Or worthless.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#18

Post by digi_owl »

chuhnk wrote: post #11

It's cyclical and this should be obvious to anyone in technology. We move between eras of centralisation and decentralisation. The internet started as a decentralised network in which we then built high capacity centralised systems at an accelerated rate. We're now about to shift back into a new era of decentralisation fuelled by edge/fog computing, IoT and p2p networks all on top of the existing infrastructure. The…

Pretty much. The way i see it is that as there is an upsurge of easy money and/or cheap resources, you get a bunch of talk about decentralization, standards and cooperation. But once the cycle start turning round, everyone goes back to building silos via lock-in and proprietary solutions.

At this point the net may well be seeing its third such cycle.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#19

Post by spc476 »

doctorshady wrote: post #5
sverige wrote: post #3

The narrative for the last few years, at least in the mainstream media, is that Google Facebook Twitter Microsoft et al. are too big for anyone else to replace them. It's the old "inevitability" argument - if your new thing gets too big, they'll just buy you up. Let's hope people continue to try to create services that a big percentage of people use and then resist to sell to the big data companies.

This probably won't be a popular opinion, but it seems like Google/Facebook/etc are entrenched too deeply in this incarnation of the web to be displaced any time soon. They seem to understand where they are too - it goes beyond just buying out competitors. Look at Facebook's Internet Lite plan for India.

At one point IBM was deeply entrenched in the industry. At another point in time it was Microsoft.

This too, shall pass.

Re: Reweaving the web: A slew of startups is trying to decentralise the online world

#20

Post by joelg »

"Most are based on open-source software, which anybody can use without charge, so startups will have to make money with add-on services, such as updates, maintenance and subscriptions."

I hope that in the next century, we'll chuckle with nervous laughter at how absurd the loaded assumptions in quotes like this were, and at how reasonable it seemed at the time.

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