The SAFE network should have gone live in January 2000 in my opinion. I’m really glad there’s finally some hope of escaping the tyranny of “domain registrars”, “certificate authorities”, DNS nightmare, hosting nightmare, dealing with servers, thieves and scammers such as PayPal, and all that crap, BUT… I fear it’s all coming way too late. I know it’s anything but an easy task, and the developers are geniuses, but I also get an eerie feeling that it soon won’t matter.
With remote hardware backdoors built into every Intel/AMD processor shipped since many years, and recent generations making it impossible to remove, and with Windows having turned into one big surveillance fest, one has to really wonder what possible chances the SAFE network stands to grow usefully big, once finally released.
Let’s never forget that even if SAFE is the smartest, most thought-through and attractive technology ever created, it will all have been for nothing – many years of wasted efforts – unless it can be successfully put in front of the masses’ eyes. I don’t see any major company helping SAFE out, for example by allowing it to be bundled with some popular software. With a lot of personal experience in failed projects that never went anywhere, as well as a user and supporter of various projects which I wanted to succeed, but remained obscure and thus practically worthless, I really am genuinely concerned about how this is going to work out, even though I really love the idea.
Is there some really concrete action that is planned to actually spread SAFE? Please don’t think for a second that its merits alone will be enough.
This is true–that even great products typically require a highly strategic and organized marketing program to meet their potential in terms of awareness and adoption. However, I am increasingly convinced that Maidsafe gets this. For example, I believe Maidsafe recently made some specific marketing hires, which I believe signals an important pivot from “supply side” operations (i.e., building Safenet) to “demand side” operations (i.e., deploying Safenet).
It isn’t one-size-fits-all when it comes to what makes a marketing program succesful. Marketing strategy (i.e., what you say, how you say it, when you say it, where you say it, and to who) needs to be targeted to the consumer/customer and fitted to the product. I am curious to see what Maidsafe’s marketing team comes up with. In the meanwhile, perhaps you should checkout the “Preparing a Coordinated Marketing Campaign” thread. Grassroots, word of mouth marketing from brand/product advocates is one of the most powerful and impactful marketing media and tools.
I totally get where your coming from but I also feel that the world needed to have the “unsafe” internet first so people could really see the need for SAFE. The public are slowly realizing that these big internet companies like facebook and google dont have the customers best interests in mind and the more hacks and identity thefts there are the more sense the SAFE network will make.
Also the fact that people are loosing faith in centralized authority / governments will help SAFE. The general rise of bitcoin and cryptos will also be an advantage. A lot of people in the bitcoin space see SAFE as just a decentralized storage solution. I feel we need to convince more bitcoiners / blockchain people to the advantages of the SAFE network. I would like to see a SAFE podcast talking about all things safe once safecoins are live and we are in beta. Or some Maidsafe people as guests on things like world cyrpto network or the Joe Rogan show.
I have just got out of bed so sorry if this is a hard to read, i can hardly see the keyboard
I agree that it is too late to change TCP/IP, but it is never too late to add more applications and protocols which run over it; safe net is just one of these.
You don’t have to choose to only use one or the other. You will just install the safe net client and then any apps which need it will use it.
Sure, stuff like Facebook is tricky because you need lots of people using the same thing to give it value. Lots of apps don’t have this problem though and many apps could just use bits of safe net they need and clear net for the rest. I am thinking configuration/profile storage for a start.
In short, we don’t need a big bang, a switch over day or anything else like that. Safe net just needs to be useful enough for people to try it and it will pick up steam organically.
Evolution is dialectic. First you got the original utopian project of the Internet, then capitalism enclosed it, leading to the current oligarchic, centralised Internet, out of which will emerge triumphant the new descentralised utopia. This is e-class struggle at its best.
Not being able to censor it and not being able to turn it off is a recipe for huge controversy and therefore exposure imo. The press and the state will be outraged that this thing can’t be turned off. Imagine if the next big wikileaks reveals are done on SAFE, or DM’s open up and get big/well-known. I can think of a lot of potential uses and users of SAFE who would drive controversial coverage. In fact, I find it pretty hard to imagine SAFE not being a far hotter topic than BTC has been post-launch.
As I said in the DM thread, I think we should welcome controversy as it is most likely the way we enter public consciousness.
I’m more worried about safe://underage-lolitas, safe://aryan-resistance and safe://blackmail-dumps. Those kinds of SAFE sites will cause MaidSafe Inc. and its owners to be harassed and made to add manual blocks into their client or something. It’s not easy to “stand up for free speech” when some three-letter organization’s henchmen have a gun pointed at your 6-year-old daughter’s head and say they will pull the trigger unless you do as they say.
