It is worth iterating that the phrase "uploading to the cloud" is nothing more than re-saving files on an another computer (server) and the infrastructure had no evolution when this term was introduced. The process of saving data to servers provides larger computation and storage needs. Applications running on more powerful computers are able to use the increased power and space to remove dependence on personal computer power. While this equalizes the opportunity to use applications with heavier processes and larger files, these processes and files are at increased risk. Much like banks holding a lot of individual's money, hosting companies with cloud services maintaining a lot of individual's files and applications are susceptible to targeted malicious hacking. It becomes much simpler for adversaries and government organizations to obtain or corrupt many individual's data in one central place as opposed to having to access every individual's personal computer separately. Considering the age of the Internet, this is quickly becoming an antiquated system and it's certainly time for the next step in its evolution.

Additionally, much like other businesses based on centralized systems, power and control attracts self-interested management which tends to result in customers desires being ignored. In the digital world, the result of corporatism takes a different shape as advertisements on the Internet are much easier to serve and much more direct than those on television or billboards. However, much like commercials on television, online advertisements give Internet services the ability to make money while still offering products for free to consumers. Maybe the most obvious case is with Google; everything from search, email and storage is offered for free in exchange for embedded ads within these services. Since ad value is typically calculated for each click generated, knowing information about consumers to improve accuracy in serving advertisements and resulting clicks becomes a priority. Perhaps needless to say, this is the point where consumer privacy starts to become neglected and a new evolved system looks increasingly necessary to maintain a digital society free from hidden terms and subsequent privacy violations.

So the focus now becomes a matter of keeping the efficiencies of power and storage space of remote computers without the downfalls of centralizing them. Over the years, several attempts have been made to improve this situation, none of them have been successful at offering a replacement to the current system. While BitTorrent may have made a noble attempt at decentralizing file sharing, they effectively removed many benefits of uploading files to a cloud by requiring many copies of the same file to be stored on local machines all around the world. The social network, Diaspora, began with a focus on the use of federated servers to improve redundancy and choice, however failed to offer significant benefits in the realm of security. 

At MaidSafe our focus has been re-imagining the way in which data on the cloud is distributed. Instead of uploading a file or running a process on a single server, what if you could divide the data into chunks and spread them throughout various computers on the Internet? And what if there was no way to determine what said chunks are and where they are located unless you had permission to access them through encryption key technology? What if this network was open source, not controlled by any central party and had applications built in such a way that they resembled the way we currently interact with the Internet? What if participants of the network, who allow others to store chunks of data, were compensated with a built-in cryptocurrency for the resources they are providing? And finally, what if this same mechanism was also used to reward open source developers for building great applications? This is the SAFE network. Eight years in the making, MaidSafe (Massive Array of Internet Disks; Secure Access For Everyone) was founded by David Irvine who saw the inherent flaw in the client-server infrastructure currently utilized by the Internet. He saw the downward spiral of centralized servers as an unnatural process and set out to look at the way decentralized systems naturally evolved providing both security and efficiency through resiliency, adaptability and division of labor.

When the SAFE network is released, whistleblowers will have an exponentially safer platform to use for sharing information to the world, while individuals will have the same security in saving private data. Individuals interested in sharing resources to the network will earn a cryptocurrency exponentially more private than bitcoin, and developers interested in creating free and open source applications will earn the same cryptocurrency so there is no need for distracting advertisements. Making centralized servers and the control of them irrelevant is a natural next step in the Internet's evolution, and as a result we will see the emergence of individual privacy, security and freedom.

  Riseup is a collective providing secure online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change. If you appreciate the tools Riseup provides, please contribute! We rely on contributions by users to exist: http://riseup.net/donate