This $2M is yours if you can 'decentralize' the web

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Sat, Jun 24, 2017 at 11:45 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Mozilla: This $2M is yours if you can 'decentralize'
the web
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


[Note:  This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis.  DLH]

Mozilla: This $2M is yours if you can 'decentralize' the web
It's not a "Silicon Valley" plot line. The Firefox maker and the
National Science Foundation are aiming for a free and accessible internet
for everyone.
By Alfred Ng
Jun 23 2017
<
https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-offering-2m-to-anyone-who-can-decentralize-the-web/
>

Mozilla and the National Science Foundation want a new internet. And it
should be free and accessible for everybody.

They'll pay $2 million for it.

On Wednesday, the two organizations issued a call to action for "big ideas
that decentralize the web
<https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/21/2-million-prize-decentralize-web-apply-today/>"
as part of the "Wireless Innovation for a Networked Society" challenges.
The challenges include getting the internet to communities off the grid,
with proposals like a backpack with a computer and Wi-Fi router inside.

The internet was born decentralized, actually, and it remains a family of
networks, with traffic distributed over many routes. That Netflix film
you're streaming gets broken into lots of little packets that are
reassembled on your end for a (generally) smooth viewing.

But still, the web reaches only so far in some places, or not at all to
others. And there are pinch points -- individual companies that route such
a heavy flow of traffic that a single incident can mean a widespread outage.

Solving the access problem may seem like a fantasy. It's even a major plot
in the latest season of HBO's comedy "Silicon Valley
<http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/silicon-valley/629938/>." Richard
Hendricks, the stumbling genius founder of Pied Piper on the show, played
by Thomas Middleditch, proposes using every phone on the planet to create a
new internet <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peDBpDXdzuA>.

About 34 million people in the US don't have access to the internet, and
even that pales in comparison to the digital divide in the rest of the
world. Globally, 4.4 billion people don't have internet access
<https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/4-billion-people-still-don-t-have-internet-access-here-s-how-to-connect-them/>
--
more than half of the world's population.

Infrastructure is the largest obstacle, and that's provoked some
crazy-seeming projects. Just ask Facebook and Google about their plans for,
respectively, a giant Wi-Fi drone and internet-beaming balloons.

Mozilla hopes its new push will lead to a more accessible internet for
everyone.



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