The Open Web can aspire to continue the peer-to-peer legacy of the classic internet applications.
Decentralized platforms such as Usenet, email and IRC were not controlled by any one organization, and do not directly capture profit. The web has been the focus of the commercialization of the internet due to it’s client-server architecture that gives full control to the website operator. This control is required by the logic of Capitalist finance in order to capture value. Without such control profit-seeking investors do not provide funds.
However, this control comes at a cost. Centralized systems are far less efficient at managing online communications than decentralized systems. The corporate, web-based communication-platforms that emerged under the Web 2.0 monicker are hungry for more than just Capital. The huge datacenters required to run them also consume massive natural resources and energy, and cause massive amounts of pollution. Yet, desipite all, these platforms still commonly experience scaling issues and frequent outages, straining under the profit-imposed need to centralize control. And this in a world where the majority of the global population does in practical terms not have access to the internet. Of course, environmental concerns are not the only issue with overly centralized systems. Perhaps even of greater concern are the implications for privacy and freedom of speech and association when control of our social technology is held by only a few private corporations.
Lost in the hype of the Social Web is the fact that the Internet has always been about sharing: Usenet, email and IRC have for a long time enabled social connections, including citizen journalism, photo sharing, and other features of recent web-based systems.
Thimbl demonstrates the potential for integrating classic internet technologies into the Open Web. On the surface, Thimbl appears to be yet another microblogging service, similar to Twitter or identi.ca. However, Thimbl is a specialized web-based client for a User Information protocol called Finger. The Finger Protocol was orginally developed in the 1970s, and as such, is already supported by all existing server platforms.
Thimbl offers no way to sign up. It is up to your own webhost, internet service-provider or system administrator to provide accounts. Virtually every server on the intenret already has Finger server software available in its software repository. All that is required for any organisation to provide Thimbl accounts is to simply turn their Finger service on. In most cases, this would take the server administator no more than a few minutes, after which all of their users could log in to thimbl.net and participate. So Thimbl is a call to arms for users to demand this option.
Most importantly, Thimbl has embedded within it a vision for the Open Web that goes beyond the web. For the web to be truly open it must integrate pervasivaly in to the internet as a whole. The internet has always has been much more than the web.
via Thimbl
