Chris Car

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.

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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

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The average german online surfer is 40 years old. I thought the average is much lower, actually. So the important question is: can the creators of internet platforms connect to this demographics?

Link

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This weekend you can watch a lot of people with Quebec flags on the streets in Montreal. Also flags saying “Quebec - un nouveau pays” (Quebec - a new country) are quite common. The people seem to be proud of Quebec and they fight for more independence from Canada (as far as noticed). I think a “healthy” nationalism is good and can be an advantage for a country. But - and this is the interesting aspect on this subject and that’s why I am writing about that - I am not used to seeing that! I am not used to see people having their flags attached to their cars and bikes. And why? Because I am from Austria and we are not that proud of that (the same is true for Germany). Because to much cruelty happened in the past and people are afraid of showing that they are proud of their country. My theory is that people are afraid of doing something wrong, again. In the sense of joining a group which - in the end - turns out to do bad bad things (like the invention of industrialized killing of people who don’t share a single vision).

An example:3 years ago I was partying in a dance club in Hamburg and a young guy wore a jacket with a small flag of Germany on it. And guess what happened, he was not asked only once if he is a Nazi. And this club was full of young people under 20: skaters, punks, etc. I thought these kids have already overcome the past. But it showed me the contrary.

I think it will still take some years until a generation will grow up which knows about what happened in the past but which can also be proud of being from Germany or Austria, without hiding it in the public. Quebec is a good example for that, the wars are long over.

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Internet2 is up and running. 100Gbit/s from the east to the west coast of U.S. Currently it is only open for universities and research institutes which can connect with 54Gbit/s or 10Gbit/s respectively. There are rumors that Internet2 will be opened for public too, acting as the “clean internet”. Scary. Via heise

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Sony apologizes to the church for using a cathedral in one of their first-person shooters. Via heise

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German Flickr users protest against censorship. Since Flickr launched its bi-lingual interface a couple of days ago, German users cannot reach erotic photos on Flickr anymore. Groups like Flickr: Against Censorship are organized protests by users. Yahoo who owns Flickr says that they have to use these filters to comply to german law. Via heise

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Get your “Longtail Superstar” shirt!

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