I am going to use this steemit site like a blog for my progress on some ideas I have. So here goes:
DIY Internet
I think it is important for global society as a whole to be able to communicate freely and share information. The more ability to do that, the more powerful people are as a whole (and it tends to bring everyone onto the same level).
The way communication is now, almost all of it goes through intermediaries: google, facebook, youtube, hotmail, etc
As long as these intermediaries are being nice, it is all good, but because there is immense power in being able to view (and modify) communication, it will eventually attract the attention of evil doers.
So to combat this I believe the solution is to set it up so there is no intermediary; make it peer to peer.
I am working on a network box that allows building of a private peer to peer network. It uses all open source software: linux, cjdns, ipfs, yacy, etc. as well as some bits of 'glue' software/webpages that will make it easy for intermediate level computer users to set up.
It is made so that it can function independently if needed. (Which then it would just function as a low power file server/router for the persons home network). But the real power comes when you start linking the boxes to one another. This can be done through the regular internet, or by running your own wired or wireless links (ubiquity hardware is ideal). When a box is peered with another box, the owner can allocate shared resources to a peer. Shared resources could include storage/data, processing/gpu, network access, etc.
The idea is to have it replace the position of a router in a home network, and get the boxes linked up in networks that are off the internet as well, and to get people publishing content on their own machines, for peers which they choose to publish to (or the whole world if they want), and then after that, set up a peer to peer search engine that can find content that you are looking for that someone else has shared.