Why decentralization matters and why it matters to us
And why we’re betting on Beaker Browser.
When the web was new, the web was open and decentralized. Not one company controlled the entire web. But decentralization was limited in some sense because of technological limitations. Over the last two decades these limitations — among others — have led to the rise of the Big Four internet companies: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. Together, they control more than half of all the content on the web today.
It might seem like it isn’t that big of a deal. They are providing a service that is needed and they do it well. However, there are growing concerns about the amount of control they exert. For instance: Facebook doesn’t allow anonymous accounts or groups about breastfeeding, Amazon won’t sell some Google products, and Google is gathering more and more central control.
How much influence are these companies allowed to have, before it becomes a problem? And what recourse do we have by then?
Some influential people are calling for change, now, while we still can. Among others Tim-Berners Lee, Vint Cerf and Brewster Kahle. They’re calling for an improved version of the Web. One where decentralization is not optional. And smart young people all over the world are working on this right now.
SimplyEdit actually started after we listened to the talk ‘Locking the web open’ by Brewster Kahle. In this talk he asked for a Wordpress for the decentralized web. Now we can finally say that we’ve done that, or something close to it. SimplyEdit can now be used to create and edit a website using Beaker Browser, a browser that supports the DAT protocol.
Take a look at our new Programmers Reference at https://reference.simplyedit.io/, or if you are running Beaker go to dat://reference.simplyedit.io/. Or for a more traditional website go to dat://spectral-auke.sharespace.nl/ and fork it.
Beaker finally makes it dead easy to make your own website. And combined with the latest SimplyEdit, you can edit it without any technical knowledge. Host the site on your own computer or add a copy at hashbase.io. This is the easiest and cheapest way to have your own website. The best thing is: You’re in full control of your site.
We’re still working on supporting other technologies, like IPFS and Blockstack, but Beaker Browser currently is the simplest way to start experimenting with the decentralized web. Try it, you might like it :)
P.S. SimplyEdit is not limited to the decentralized web, it works just fine on any ‘old’ webhosting environment as well.
