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Decentralizing the Internet needs to be in-browser

1 pointsby whadarover 10 years ago

1 comment

sparkieover 10 years ago
Oh my, the inner platform effect is strong with this one.<p>&gt; When I (or anyone else) am on the web, I’m always in-browser.<p>How long did it take you to figure that one out?<p>The infrastructure of the internet is not broken and it never was - it is inherently P2P to begin with, and we&#x27;ve only constructed these centralized models on top of it - the chief suspect being the web&#x2F;web server. Yes, the web is broken, how does that lead to operating-system-phobia?<p>&gt; Personally, I don’t want foreign software interacting with other outside sources running on my computer at all times.<p>What do you think that JavaScript that powers interactivity on the web is doing: it&#x27;s foreign invasive software which you don&#x27;t even get to decide whether or not you&#x27;d like to run (bar installing browser add-ons).<p>&gt; While this work is influential, P2P isn’t part of the web, and the need to install proprietary apps creates added friction<p>This is backwards: The P2P apps are free software, but the JavaScript you&#x27;re downloading and running is mostly proprietary, and you can&#x27;t decide to not run it.<p>The browser is <i>the most</i> invasive software you can get on a modern computer - it wants to do everything - literally to the point where it is attempting to hijack the OS.<p>There&#x27;s still plenty it can&#x27;t do though - it can&#x27;t interact with other software on the host machine - or even other web apps hosted on different servers. The browser is a walled garden which does not let information out onto a user&#x27;s machine, bar them clicking &quot;download&quot;.<p>At best, we can install a local web server on the machine, navigate to some pages it hosts via the browser, and have the web server translate HTTP requests into some more meaningful OS interaction - thereby escaping the web.<p>And no, re-writing all of our software to be web based is not a solution to this problem. The web should be augmenting our operating systems, not replacing them.