CHRIS CAR

I just updated my previous blog post about decentralization of today’s online platforms. I found some other very interesting blog posts on this subject. I am very happy about it since I am not alone!

Check the updates

I am nagging around since a while that I don’t like the fact that today’s hip web applications are centralized applications in data centers around the world. Good old software was installed locally on your computer and you did not need access to the internet to use it. So today we have, for example Google spreadsheets, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook, which all offer their services more or less for free but which keep your data and which make it hard for people to export and move your data to other platforms or just on your local harddisk. Of course you can save your photos from Flickr, but can you also port and save your meta data like “number of views”, your “contact lists” etc. ? Nope.

These companies wants to LOCK IN people on their platforms and services, making it really hard or impossible to move data and meta data. Why? Because they need many users generating page impressions (advertising).

Think of “Snowcrash” (book by Neil Stevenson), the main actor is connected to a SecondLife-like world most of the time, but if he doesn’t have network access, he can always access at least his virtual home LOCALLY on his own machine, without the need to be connected. BECAUSE his own assets / data is always stored locally; it is just loosely connected to the rest of the virtual world.

So what I suggest is a more radical thinking of how we could create an infrastructure which is decentralized and which allows us to connect to each other at the same time. And it is not a bandwidth discussion, since DSL and its successors do have the necessary capabilities to carry all the requests and responses do your locally stored data assets. By the way, DSL doesn’t need to be asynchronous (higher downstream rate / lower upstream rate), it is just an artificial constraint demanded by your internet service provider (we are consumers and users, right? - not participants and senders or just… people).

Anyways, I guess the next generation of developers and thinkers will find ways to overcome this LOCK IN situation. Like it was always if we look at the past.

I made a list of open source / community created software which substituted its closed source / license locked in successor.

Microsoft XP - Ubuntu
Microsoft MSSQL - MySQL
Microsoft Office - Open Office and NOT “Google Office”
Microsoft Server 2000 - Debian Linux, RedHat Linux, etc.
Moveable Type - Wordpress
Socialtext - MediaWiki (maybe not true)

… and many more. Of course these software applications need a server to run on, but at least you can get and manage your own server and database.

Google Analytics, Sitemeter - ?
Flickr - ?
Twitter - ?
YouTube - ?
Facebook, MySpace, etc. - ?
Google Search - ?
GMail - Thunderbird, your local mail application
Google Maps - ?

Internet Service Provider (ISP) - create your own decentralized network with your neighbours using WLAN and Powerline networks (based on electric cables).

That’s it for now and don’t forget: Keep your data in your pocket !!!

Update: I stumbled accross this project yesterday night: Atomique which aims to create a platform for decentralized photo sharing like Flickr. They included a nice graphics which visualizes the differences of today’s platforms with (hopefully) future platforms: service centered vs. user centered platforms. The project itself sounds promising, although it will take some time until people realize that Flickr is a lock-in solution. Check out the FlickrCentral discussion group “Decentralize Flickr”.

Update 2: I found a good blog post about portable social networks and decentralized networks. I am glad to see that there are more people thinking of a decentralized and portable solution! Check it out!

Update 3: I found a very interesting blog post which is about loosly coupled systems and the ability to import, export and migrate content from these systems, in the name of protecting the democratic internet. I fully agree with this article! The technology is already there, we just need some visionary volunteers! Link

Update 4: Amazing! I found another blog post about decentralization ideas of social networks:

Facebook is an amazing platform. There is no doubt about it. I am excited about their platform, which can be seen by the number of facebook related posts I have made. Still, there is something in me, the open source part of me, which tells me that facebook could be the next Microsoft or the hundreds of other companies, that lock you into their product.

He is also mentioning that we needed a Microsoft to understand the concept of Open Source. So we need a MySpace and Facebook which are acting as the Microsoft for the social networking world.

Link

Update 5: Wall This! is a blog on thoughts of open social networking sites.

Update 6: An excellent blog post on ideas about a decentralized facebook platform can be found here.

http://thisismybeautifuldomainonedayillbegonebutitwillremain.com

By Lev Manovich

Written for Domainpoets.com, March 2003

Just stumbled accross this interview of an ex-google employee who was hired by Microsoft. If this interview is true, it’s scary (at least for me - thinking of having a “manager” taking care of me… omg!). Anyways, an interesting article…

Link via slashdot

I always thought that only 1% of a site’s visitors are actively producing content and that 99% are just watching and consuming. O’Reilly Radar posted some very interesting numbers for the most popular platforms on the web:

An interesting stat is that participation isn’t huge on web 2.0. Only 0.16% of visits to YouTube, 0.2% of visits to Flickr and 4.59% of visits to Wikipedia are “participation visits”.

Link