arkOS and the decentralization of the internet
I have to say that I find arkOS arguably more interesting for what the idea represents than the actual project itself.
arkOS is the brainchild of Jacob Cook, a young programmer from Montreal who became tired of the dependency involved in operating out of the Cloud, and was even more irritated by the close of Google Reader, so he decided to design a simple domestic server that anybody could install in their Raspberry Pi for the modest sum of $35, connect it to a port in the router, and use it to store files, calendars, contacts, an email server, a blog, or small personal website, etc.
There is nothing new about the idea of a home-based server; what is new about this is how simple it is to use. Just about anybody could install this using the right plugins to set it up. The idea of using a Raspberry Pi, a radically cheap computer that fits in a cigarette packet, but possessed of considerable solidity, minimum consumption, and something that many people have described as “the perfect home server,” makes the whole thing even more attractive. Cook says that he will free up his creation, making it possible to install in any machine, for example that old PC gathering dust that you don’t know what to do with.
The project has garnered 21% of its $45,000 objective on a crowdfunding site, with 23 days to go. Independently of whether the project goes ahead, the idea of radically decentralizing the internet is a fascinating one, potentially allowing us to regain control of many of the services we use.
We are living through exciting times: as broadband width increases for home connections, we are seeing a sharp drop in the cost of the hardware needed to process and store information (a Raspberry Pi costs around $35, while a 1 Terabyte hard drive around $50). At the same time, the knowledge required to install and configure these kinds of services is easier than ever to acquire. Combining this with the reality of an environment that we have less and less control over, along with espionage, the idea is certainly attractive.
