[p2p-research] Fwd: on the importance of personal servers for the new multi-literate society

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Marco, I'm hoping Sepp can write it and rely on your insights as
well,

Sepp: are you in any way affected by the Madeira events, I'm assuming you're
in Rome now?

Michel

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 3:45 PM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 14:03:36 PM +0700, Michel Bauwens (
> michelsub2004 at gmail.com) wrote:
> > Dear Sepp,
> >
> > this quote by stephen downes seems important, and it's something I
> > not fully understand, I think our readers would benefit if you could
> > explain the benefitss of this strategy to them,
> >
> > see http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2010/02/pew-report-interview.html
> >
> > "I choose to see personal web‐server technology (Opera Unite,
> > Firefox POW, etc) as a breakthrough technology, so people can put
> > their own data into the cloud without paying Flickr or whomever. It
> > is this sort of 'personal technology' I believe will characterize
> > (what we now call) web 3.0 (and not 3D, or semantic web, etc.). So
> > my dilemma is that, while these technologies are pretty evident
> > today, it is not clear that the people I suspect Pew counts as “the
> > savviest innovators” are looking at them. So I pick “out of the
> > blue” even though (I think) I can see them coming from a mile away.”
> > – Stephen Downes, National Research Council, Canada
>
> What Downes says above is the same thing I explained here last year in
> the whole "p2p email" thread which starts here:
>
>
> http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-May/002609.html
>
> but you should read it all. Anyway, here's a summary:
>
> - cloud services as offered today (including Gmail, Google Wave/buzz,
>  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube...) are bad (engineering-wise) and the
>  opposite of P2P/empowerment/democracy... because they (re)introduce
>  and make even look trendy and cool centralized points of technical
>  failure and political/economical control. See gmail outages, Google
>  shutting down musical blogs some days ago, Berlusconi's Mediaset
>  demanding that YouTube removes all clips of their reality shows,
>  Iran tracking or blocking dissidents via Twitter...
>
> - what Downes calls "personal technology" is already here TODAY. You
>  could either invent futuristic solutions and try to make the huge
>  effort they need to happen asap (which is where I and M. Fawzi
>  diverged in that thread), OR get today 99% of that, ie solve almost
>  completely the problem described in my paragraph above if you have:
>
>            1) a few euros per month
>            2) some ICT skills, OR somebody creating easy interfaces
>               to self-manage all the software pieces that ALREADY
>               exist
>            3) interest in doing this, that is studying software or
>            alternatively creating enough demand for the interfaces of
>            #2
>
>            Marco
> --
> Ninux Day, or why you too may need your "neighborhood Internet":
> http://stop.zona-m.net/node/47
>
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