Grey Cloud Platforms
If you're not paying for something,
you're not the customer,
you're the product being sold.
Andrew Lewis
Although Grey Cloud Platforms do provide useful services to the public, their disadvantages are substantial (see image below), before Private Cyberspaces there was no competition so they just keep growing ... until they dominate every aspect of our lives.
You have lost control of your data ... you see a world presented by the Cloud, you communicate with people suggested by the Cloud, you develop using Cloud tools, you interact through Cloud interfaces ... you are living your life by Cloud rules.
2. Free Service Delusion
Cloud companies do NOT become massively profitable by providing free services. They take something of value from you (your DATA) and create something of even more value (CONTROL of you) for themselves.
2.1. Distorting World Views
Whether you are using the Cloud for your searches or your videos, you are using THEIR algorithms (they decide what to tell you about the world, what data about you to sell to who, when to insert which advertisement into your view etc.), that is, they control your information environment and thus they also control your life.
Having someone who controls a large part of your life acting against your interests is a problem.
But it is not just the "personalised" video recommendations and search ranking that distort your world view, it is also the constant notifications that interrupts your ability to look further or think deeply.
That repeating of same short sharp messages and preventing you from further investigations, can promote believes and behaviours that are NOT in your interest.
For example, preventing the determination of whether something is is "a need" or "a want" and whether some action is "right" or "wrong".
SOLVED: Private Cyberspace uses algorithms that you select and can change at any time. Whether it is search ranking, video recommendations or instant notifications, you are in control.
2.2. Acting with Impunity
Power tends to corrupt and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
It is difficult to find organisations that do NOT act against the interest of its users, even innocent weather channels have problems.
The Clouds can PROMISE all they want in their usage terms and conditions, but they can also DO whatever they want anyway, since they have your data on their infrastructure.
For example, even if you are technical enough to tell Google to explicitly NOT to track you, it stills tracks you anyway against your explicit instruction. Basically, information about you is collected by Google continuously in their interests not yours.
The fines for wrong doings are small compared to the profits being made, there is no reason for Clouds reduce their income voluntarily in the interest of their users.
SOLVED: Private Cyberspace aligns with your interests (instead of Cloud's interests), there is no rule, term nor condition for you, you do whatever is best for you with your data.
2.3. Holding Data Ransom
The above are bad behaviours that the Clouds do not tell you, but even if the Clouds DO tell you about bad things they are going to do to you, what can you do ?
For example, Twitter has disabled some of your ability to control your privacy. But you are not going to uninstall the Twitter app because of such a small thing, are you? And all future changes are probably "small" things too!
The problem is you gave them your data to build their information assets BEFORE these new changes, now those data are locked in.
Giving Clouds your data is easy but exporting or deleting your data ?
What about your social network that you have exposed and donated to the Cloud, so it can control your friends too ? You are probably going to miss that ?
SOLVED: All data are stored in your Private Cyberspace, giving you exclusive access to every bit of data you have collected and every piece of message you have received, only you can decide on when, what, how and who to share them with.
2.4. No Home Privacy
The security problems with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are well known.
The situation is getting worse everyday as more "smart" devices are deployed inside of homes, these vulnerable devices (from speakers to cameras to teddy bears) are massive security risks - as they are now making connections to the Cloud "internally" from your local network, your home broadband router is no longer effective in blocking these what really in fact are "external" connections.
So beside seeing and influencing your external world view, with the help of these home devices the Cloud can now see into your local network (which were previously off-limits to scanners and web crawlers). Most of these devices will not even work without an internet connection back to the Cloud - so data from your most private space is now shipped all over the world 24x7.
SOLVED: Private Cyberspace keeps activities in your physical home space private, by locking all of them up (from voice commands to room temperatures to security videos) for your exclusive use.
2.5. Artificial Intelligence Safety
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies like Amazon Alexa telling a kid to short an electrical wall outlet is dangerous enough but what about the USA using AI to pick targets to kill instead of just destroying targets humans picked?
The ironic thing is governments do NOT need to install cameras everywhere, when citizens are exposing themselves freely on Instagram, that database has became useful for in identifying enemy soldiers in Ukraine.
SOLVED: With Private Cyberspace both the data and the AI software remain within the control of the owner. From scanning your friends' faces in photos to the voice command you said yesterday, all data inputs and resulting outputs are exclusively yours.
2.6. Exploiting Public Infrastructures
Concentration of the Internet's data processing and storage in these Clouds means the broadband networks funded by EVERYONE is now being used to benefit just a FEW . . . what's worse . . . those public infrastructures are being use to control the citizens that paid for them.
Taxpayers funded a lot of the Internet infrastructure in a country, yet the traditional point to point model has now been replaced with a hub and spoke model. One of the most valuable resources of a country that was built up over decades has become an extension for the Clouds.
The better the citizens build their broadband, the more data the Cloud collects, the more it controls the citizens' lives. The broadband is used to monitor and influence them (e.g. search results, buying habits, meeting people etc.) based on the Cloud's algorithms and the Cloud's interests.
SOLVED: Private Cyberspace communicates with each other directly, ensuring that infrastructure investments in an area benefits the locally population fully instead of some corporations thousands of kilometres away.
2.7. Limitations of Regulations
The difference in nature between government (establishing boundaries) and technology (breaking boundaries) makes them strange bedfellows.
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Restricted Processing
While initiatives like European Union's General Data Protection Regulation are great, the restriction of the Cloud in handling citizen data can reduce the value of those data by preventing innovative and useful computation to be performed on them.
SOLVED: Instead of restricting what the Cloud can or cannot do to citizen data, may be the governments should also be encouraging the citizens to do more with their own data themselves?
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Wasted Data
Law that prevent Clouds keeping data, if followed, can prevent
Instead of removing the data after they have already gone into the Cloud as promoted by the right to be forgotten, what about not giving so much data to the Cloud in the first place ?
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Slow Response
Making laws to regulate technology is. too slow, by the time the government realised that their local industries (e.g. taxi, software etc.) have been negatively affected, market dominance has already been established.
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Little Understanding
From AI to blockchain, technologies can be complex making it difficult for law makers to understand their future impact and implications.
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Disadvantage the Small
Law is a very blunt tool that can stifle innovation, regulations most often make it too expensive for small players to comply yet cost the big players almost nothing to follow (assuming the lobbyists of the big players have not watered down the laws in the favour in the first place).
3. Private Cyberspace
3.1. Bus and Car Analogy
Cloud Platforms are like a BUS companies using the roads (the Internet) paid for by the citizens to run their restricted bus services. Private Cyberspace is about reclaiming the roads for ourselves and drive on them freely to anywhere in our own CARS.
The FREEDOM that comes with owning your information assets is similar to taking ownership of physical assets, like your own CAR and your own HOME - you can go anywhere at anytime without worrying about bus timetables, you can renovate your room however you like etc. You no longer need to dance to the tune of the owners of the Cloud.
Road utilisation improves (as the whole road network can now be used to carry traffic of everybody from any point to any point instead of just bus traffic) and citizen productivity improves (as they no longer need to follow the dictated bus routes nor the bus timetables).
3.2. Changing the Game
88.io operates at a more fundamental level than other information technology start-ups, which rely on CENTRALISED Cloud platforms (e.g. iOS, ethereum etc.) in order to deliver their products or services to their specific niche markets.
88.io is about lowering the COST of private computing significantly in order to create a paradigm shift from centralised cloud computing towards decentralised private computing.
Just like what the microprocessor did 50 years ago (giving birth to Apple, Microsoft etc.), enabling the massive global DECENTRALISATION of computing.
88.io drives decentralisation by empowering you to build your information asset (via private cyberspace) and shape you digital life (via citizen synergy) ... with just ONE CLICK.
3.3. Internet User to Owner
88.io restores INTERNET to its original distributed power structure and then turn PASSIVE users of information services on the internet into ACTIVE owners of information assets by helping them create their own Private Cyberspaces.
With ONE CLICK on their mobile phones, INDIVIDUALS gain control and ownership of their digital life by managing their information assets without going through third parties. Each private cyberspace zone contains the individual's OWN applications (providing services similar to Facebook, Tencent etc.).
Summary
Expanding the power of many (the citizens) is much more productive then restricting the power of the few (the cloud) - that is what Private Cyberspace computing about:
- Enabling everyone to create their own Private Cyberspaces, irrespective of their wealth and skills.
- Encouraging Private Cyberspaces to work together to solve the toughest problems facing humankind.
