I ask my fellow computer engineers what the hell are we waiting for to pool our minds and resources towards a truly decentralised, encrypted and anonymous overnet.
I often hear this somewhat loose idea and have to say that I also have such reoccurring thoughts myself. We currently enjoy pretty great freedoms to do stuff, we have the chance to set something up, and those freedoms might be severely restricted in the future. It may be easier to develop something like that now than it will ever be in the future. The problem seems to be that there is no coordinated plan. Stuff like Tor exists, but it hasn't really caught on as much as one would hope. Also it is built upon a rather specific architecture (the internet) from what I understand, which could basically be shutdown by authorities at any moment.
For example, I can't currently safely communicate with people in my geographic area independently of the internet, even though my devices theoretically have the hardware to do so (think of radio capabilities, for example). There might be some lose projects out there capable of some of it that 99.9999% never heard about, but nothing that could actually be considered general-purpose. Why is that?
It isn't an easy problem to solve. And it isn't enough of a problem for people to actually apply themselves nearly enough. Once it is needed in a way that more people would devote their time to it, it might be too late.
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I often hear this somewhat loose idea and have to say that I also have such reoccurring thoughts myself. We currently enjoy pretty great freedoms to do stuff, we have the chance to set something up, and those freedoms might be severely restricted in the future. It may be easier to develop something like that now than it will ever be in the future. The problem seems to be that there is no coordinated plan. Stuff like Tor exists, but it hasn't really caught on as much as one would hope. Also it is built upon a rather specific architecture (the internet) from what I understand, which could basically be shutdown by authorities at any moment.
For example, I can't currently safely communicate with people in my geographic area independently of the internet, even though my devices theoretically have the hardware to do so (think of radio capabilities, for example). There might be some lose projects out there capable of some of it that 99.9999% never heard about, but nothing that could actually be considered general-purpose. Why is that?
It isn't an easy problem to solve. And it isn't enough of a problem for people to actually apply themselves nearly enough. Once it is needed in a way that more people would devote their time to it, it might be too late.