The cost of five MORE years without perclouds
The percloud (“permanent/personal cloud”) is the simple, integrated alternative to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Flickr, Dropbox… that I first proposed in 2013. Yesterday, the P2P Foundation stimulated new discusssions about the percloud,
by re-publishing the 2017 version of the proposal (now superseded, see below!!!) on their blog. I will try to answer all the feedback received in the next days, but there is one thing I already want to share:
<u><em><strong>CAPTION:</strong>
<a href="/img/cost-of-five-years-NOT-doing-perclouds.big.png" target="_blank">click for higher resolution version</a>
</em></u>
When I first proposed the percloud, many hackers just answered “NO!!! Because Diaspora! Or FreedomBox! Or something similar”. Five years later, all that stuff is still irrelevant, but Facebook has doubled its “users”, causing (together with Google and others, of course) enough trouble that even George Soros called them “a global problem” at Davos.
Please take that into account, before going after newer proposals with the same attitude, or in general anything that is just compliant with the business model of the year. We probably do NOT have five more years to spend.
Update 2018/02/06: the percloud proposal is always the same, but it has been completely rewritten, in an effort to make its purpose and content both clearer, and more directly linked to the current landscape. Please read both these pages to know what the percloud is really about, and thanks in advance for sharing them:
Direct feedback via email is welcome. As of February 7th, 2018, it is also possible to promote and comment the percloud in the Next Generation Internet / Open Internet Initiative consultation platform.
(chart source: Statista.com)
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
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