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

Michel Bauwens michelsub2004 at gmail.com
Mon Feb 22 15:23:26 CET 2010 

Hi Sepp,

thanks, and your approach looks very interesting, let's go for it ..

as for ning or the blog ...

for the blog, certainly, it has 10 times more readers, but there I prefer
you pay attention to the post-dating, i.e. no more than 4 per day; since it
is an infrastructural item, I would also co-publish it on Ning, where I do
not pay attention on post-dating ... I think both reach different publics ..

sorry for confusing madeira with the azores ... back to primary school,
geography class for me <g>

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:17 PM, Sepp Hasslberger <sepp at lastrega.com> wrote:

> Thanks Michel, for copying me.
>
> I agree with Marco that all that's needed to bring the future closer is to
> find ways to implement the technologies that are already at our disposal.
> Some fancy footwork (keyboarding ;) might be required to make everything
> work together to form the cloud that things will be sitting on, and to
> connect up all those user-controlled computers to do so. There is a light
> (fractal-based?) address system in Netsukuku, developed by Sicilian hacker
> and newly graduated mathematician, Andrea Lo Pumo, that would be useful for
> the connection part (http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/?pag=faq).
>
> Wired Magazine's Italian issue reported on this one, and I might do a
> summary translation for either the p2p blog or the ning group. (Which one
> would you prefer, Michel?)
>
> Some work needs to be done to improve and strengthen the local pipes, the
> connectivity. An example for this are the - for now - thinly distributed
> local wifi networks, things like the German freifunk, and the Roman ninux.
> There are many others, but for now they are separate and very experimental
> bubbles. Netsukuku provides a possibility of virtually piping the connection
> through the conventional internet, in case a node isn't within reach of
> another's wifi connection, and presumably also to bridge the long range
> connections between the single wifi bubbles that may be quite a distance
> removed from each other, making wifi inoperable for that purpose.
>
> With rudimentary publishing possibilities provided by such programs as
> Opera Unite and Firefox POW as mentioned by Downes, we have a good
> beginning, as people can put on the cloud their own content. This may be
> either their own creations, but it may also be stuff they have collected and
> wish to re-publish.
>
> What is not quite clear to me yet is what application can make sure that
> the data stays available in the cloud, i.e. what application will fill in
> the times the individual computer may be off line. For that purpose, data as
> published will have to be redundantly stored on other computers. Something
> similar to bittorrent comes to mind, where anyone who downloads (reads)
> content will store that content for some time on their own computer, and
> re-publish it for others. They should also have the choice to make that data
> part of their own permanent contribution to the cloud. This way, data can
> propagate and become more available, depending on how popular it is. In the
> case of data that isn't very popular, there is always the (probably
> intermittent) availability through the original publisher.
>
> This is the idea in broad outline.
>
> Kind regards
> Sepp
>
> ps:
>
> @ Marco - I see you link Ninux day in your email signature. Do you have any
> suggestions on how to go about making a node? I have the same perplexity you
> have, of health concerns. And the ninux.org FAQ actually seems to
> discourage people from making a node because of legal uncertainties (?)
>
> @ Michel - no, Madeira is not part of the Azores. The distance is quite
> large, something like more than 1000 km. And also, right now I am in Rome.
> It continues to rain here but (fortunately) no big trouble from the excess
> water ...
>
>
>  On 21/feb/10, at 15:59, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
>  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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>
>
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
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>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

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