I’ve been experimenting lately with IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System, and learning more about distributed information systems like it. I think I mentioned this kind of thing in passing in a podcast a year or so ago, so I thought I’d do more of an explanation of it. First I demonstrate the client-server model which most Internet applications use, and why it’s increasingly fragile now that a handful of corporations control so much of our access to and ability to share information. Then I describe the distributed model that I expect will replace it, using IPFS as an example.

This stuff is in use, but very much under development, so I expect to do more videos and articles on it in the future, as more uses are found for it and applications built on top of it. Right now, it’s kind of like the early 1990s again, where you had to be a hobbyist, if not an expert, to really use the Internet well. It’ll take some time before these distributed systems can be used as handily as we can currently browse the web. But in the long run, we’ll have an information system that’s about as anti-fragile as possible.

IPFS key for this video: QmcMjiKBG7yoLdqXQJADBd7SqGh4Tmr5wzTF7g5rQ4cYZR