

Decentralizing the Internet needs to be in-browser - whadar
http://blog.peer5.com/decentralizing-the-web-in-browser/

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sparkie
Oh my, the inner platform effect is strong with this one.

> When I (or anyone else) am on the web, I’m always in-browser.

How long did it take you to figure that one out?

The infrastructure of the internet is not broken and it never was - it is
inherently P2P to begin with, and we've only constructed these centralized
models on top of it - the chief suspect being the web/web server. Yes, the web
is broken, how does that lead to operating-system-phobia?

> Personally, I don’t want foreign software interacting with other outside
> sources running on my computer at all times.

What do you think that JavaScript that powers interactivity on the web is
doing: it's foreign invasive software which you don't even get to decide
whether or not you'd like to run (bar installing browser add-ons).

> While this work is influential, P2P isn’t part of the web, and the need to
> install proprietary apps creates added friction

This is backwards: The P2P apps are free software, but the JavaScript you're
downloading and running is mostly proprietary, and you can't decide to not run
it.

The browser is _the most_ 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.

There's still plenty it can't do though - it can'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's machine, bar them clicking "download".

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.

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.

