Communications of the ACM
Decentralizing the Web: Maintaining the Momentum
Web luminaries gathered last week to address the challenge of fixing the centralizing tendencies of the Internet and Web.
Credit: Computing
Last week, a rather unusual tech event took place in San Francisco.
The Decentralized Web Summit played host to a gathering of web luminaries such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Brewster Kahle, and Vint Cerf. On top of that, activists and authors and screenwriters such as Jennifer Stisa Granick, Emili Jacobi, Mike Judge, and Corey Doctorow put in an appearance, as did cryptocurrency pioneers like Zooko Wilcox, blockchain developers, and academics.
Then, there was what the Guardian's John Harris calls the Punk Rock Internet — companies like MaidSafe and Blockstack, who play by their own decentralized rules.
Oh, and there was a sprinkling of techies from Microsoft, Google (Vint Cerf and others), and Mozilla in attendance too, along with a handful of venture capitalists looking for opportunities.
Uniting this diverse selection of delegates was the challenge of fixing the centralizing tendencies of the Internet and Web.
Simply put, the Internet's reliance on centralized hubs of servers and data centers means that the more servers you control the more power you have, with all the negative consequences that follow from the creation of data-haves and data-have-nots.
To redress the balance, data needs to be freed from silos with control handed back to users, but how to do that while retaining the convenience and ease-of-use of the current Web?
Aside from the inevitable resistance by the powers that be, this turns out to be quite the technical challenge.
From Computing
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