The Plot To Replace The Internet

[icyfroth]

Infam‘Ethical hackers’ in Fulham think they have a way to make your online life truly private, secure and anonymous. The world will be very different if they succeed.

An alternative way of organising the internet is being built as we speak: an internet where no one is in control, where the government can’t find you or shut you down, where big tech companies aren’t able to learn everything about you. A decentralised net that is both private and impossible to censor.

This revolution is being plotted in snazzy offices just off Fulham High Street in south-west London — not what I was expecting, since you associate hackers with hoodies, basements and graffiti. But the Ethereum project isn’t a typical hackers’ collective: it received around $12 million of crowd-funded support when it was founded a couple of years ago, by a 20-year-old Russian-Canadian programming wizard called .

That’s been enough to hire 40 of the smartest geeks you’ll ever meet, and house them in comfort in Amsterdam, Berlin and London.

Welcome to Web 3.0,’ says Vinay Gupta, a hacker-**bleep**-poverty-activist who’s part of the Ethereum team, as I arrive. Web 1.0 was all static websites.

Web 2.0 was interactive social media platforms like Facebook. This third iteration is about encrypted peer-to-peer networks. It sounds dry, but Ethereum — which is launching part of its software this spring — has London’s tech crowd purring. Last year it won the World Technology Award for IT software.

IBM has already used it to build a washing machine that orders its own soap.

But these people aren’t in it for the money. Ethereum is an open-source project which is available to everyone, and its employees will slink off when the project is complete. They’re doing it because they want to transform the internet — and, by extension, society.

Entire Article Here

a) I wonder how much it will cost.

b) I wonder how hard it will be to learn.

[gleee58]

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@the_hawk* wrote:

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@gleee58 wrote:

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Isn't the minister trying to outlaw the use of VPNs too, in his haste to suck up to those who think Australians pirate too much?

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They can try but they wont succeed with anyone that has half a clue and dont care about the threats, they dont know and cant tell you are using a good VPN so no way of stopping them.

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They just don't seem to get it at all.

Australians use VPNs through necessity rather than criminal intent because the greedy people make it impossible to access so much content through legal channels.    

The ethereum project reminds me of the early internet, only on a more broadband scale............. 

One of the greatest frustrations as an observer and user has been in watching old business trying to fit the internet of things into their old mind sets and trying to hold back the webs to suit their agendas.

 http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator-life/spectator-life-life/9477812/the-utopia-algorithm/  (from the original UK Spec article)

It’s difficult to predict where this will all end up: the evolution of the net is immune to forecast. The early 2000s saw several similar efforts at peer-to-peer software which never quite took off. But the combination of new technology and public demand make this a step-change in the internet’s endless evolution. Vinay thinks the big social media companies will feel the pressure, because someone will set up a social networking site on Ethereum that doesn’t collect your data, perfect for privacy-conscious users. Then there’s all the online marketplaces. When you buy something on eBay or Airbnb, a cut goes to the company for facilitating the transaction. A handful of programmers are planning to build an online marketplace on Ethereum where buyers and sellers can connect without a third party and their commission. Vinay also has estate agents in his sights. With Ethereum, you could create an immutable record of your house deeds, and then simply transfer them over to a buyer using encryption verification. As someone who’s dealt with their Kafkaesque administrative costs, I find this idea hugely satisfying.

It feels like Ethereum is pushing us closer to the future: a world where technology becomes more powerful, and by extension, so do all of us who wield it. There are great challenges ahead: 3D printing, drones, artificial intelligence, biological weapons being produced on DNA synthesisers. ‘We’re going to have to deal with a world in which there is unbelievably powerful technology on every front,’ explains Vinay, who looks far less worried than I do. The truth is that no political party has the foggiest idea what to do about any of this. Neither does Vinay, although he admits that ‘how we deal with information will have to change dramatically. Ethereum will force us to respond sooner’. So what’s a best-case scenario, I ask before I leave. ‘By the end of the year, we’ll be responsible for 5 per cent of the world’s internet traffic.’ And the worst? ‘Someone else will have done what we’ve done, only better. Either way, it’s going to happen.’ I’m unsure whether to be excited or terrified.

[poddster]

It is a blatant con job. Believe it at your peril.

True peer to peer is a length of wire between two points.

Out of billions of connections just how do you select a peer? Over what medium? who owns the medium? Did the medium just materialize out of nothing?

The owner of the operating system and medium controls it and if it happens to be many owners it just takes one to sever the route.

Users can be invisible now without a great deal of outlay

ITS A CON JOB

[gleee58]

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@poddster wrote:

It is a blatant con job. Believe it at your peril.

True peer to peer is a length of wire between two points.

Out of billions of connections just how do you select a peer? Over what medium? who owns the medium? Did the medium just materialize out of nothing?

The owner of the operating system and medium controls it and if it happens to be many owners it just takes one to sever the route.

Users can be invisible now without a great deal of outlay

ITS A CON JOB

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Why don't you go and read up about it before commenting.

Who knows, it might help sift out the little-mr-expert-know-it-alls-of-the-webz. Beware, the pinnacle atop the pedestal might cause brain damage with prolonged use.

[tasfleur]

the issue with that is the internet is not owned by one individual, company or government, it is owned by every individual that uses it and there for its up to the individual to be resposible for their own use, you are in control and resposible for what you do and to protect yourself.
Companies like Google, microsoft and Governments want to take control but its not their to control, they can and do monitor what goes on but they are realy wasting their time because a simple VPN will get around any system.

Hi Hawk xxx

What you post is absolutely true and what I believe as well, so we're not at cross purposes there.

Google, Microsoft etc can be made to take down certain sites that are used for criminal and terrorist purposes (usually via Governments), not often, but it does happen, but then, they appear via a different site or country.

I'd like to believe that the internet is 'owned' by people as individuals, but I suspect the truth is far from that, however, it's a long and winding road where the philosophies and realities are poles apart so the discussion, perceived and/or real, won't be agreed upon in a lifetime and the same old habits will prevail, that is the human condition.

The best anyone can hope for, in my opinion, is for humanity itself to change, not so that it is all the same, but so that all cultures can agree to disagree agreeably, but there again, not likely to happen any time soon while destructive power is held through technology and used against, rather than for, humanity as a whole.

[poddster]

Astrosurfing Glee?

No answers to the questions I posted ?

Didn't think so, typical 🙂

 

[gleee58]

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@poddster wrote:

Astrosurfing Glee?    Bullying Poddster?

No answers to the questions I posted ?    Relevant questions?  No!

Didn't think so, typical     So typical is was the response.

 

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[poddster]

I rest my case 🙂

[gleee58]

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@poddster wrote:

I rest my case 🙂

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You have no case to rest.