I had mentioned a concept for an app in the SAFEbook thread almost a year ago now and after some on and off engagement I am back ON! Quit my full-time job, in the phase of giving direction to the founding team and 100% committed to making it work.
Outlining the bigger picture motivator for metame.
We are living in a world where our interaction with network connected technology is increasingly touching so many aspects of our lives. The need for technology that allows people to have ownership and control over the data generated through this interaction is paramount for human creativity and collaboration to flourish.
Currently much of the data and associated metadata we generate is in disparate places, owned and controlled by corporations (whether through non exclusive or exclusive property rights) or governments (through department databases and security and intelligence services). This data is stored on servers that make it prone to security breaches, data theft and fraud and open for surveillance on a large scale. Insights gained from the analysis of this data are used to predict human behaviours, manipulate people through advertising and maintain influence over groups of people for ideological reasons.
The rise in awareness and use of p2p technologies and the development of decentralized and distributed systems is coinciding with trends of growing dissatisfaction with centralized political structures and decision-making processes, corporate and government corruption and collusion, and widespread surveillance. Internet users are becoming more privacy conscious and are developing an understanding of the growing amount of data they are generating and it’s value as a digital asset.
Our digital lives are being recorded and mapped with an advancing amount of detail providing insight into our individual and collective behaviour and minds.
The predominant business paradigm of the internet is advertising based with our digital lives continually infiltrated with persuasive messages all trying to get our attention. People use tools to block out and/or filter these messages and develop behaviours that lead to them avoiding engagement. As advertising becomes less effective more aggressive techniques get developed to maintain the same level of engagement and the return on investment becomes harder to find.
This tension between people wanting privacy, freedom and control in their digital worlds versus the economic imperative to persuade people to purchase and consume using online media channels is becoming more and more prominent. The flow of personal data is essential for the current internet to function but the business models underlying this are exploitative and insufficient for our technology driven societies to flourish. With the new technologies being developed by the team at MaidSafe there are now opportunities to ensure current and future users of the internet have more choice in facilitating the ongoing flow of their personal data.
The seed for a new paradigm
Empower people to continue their digital lives with the knowledge that the data that forms the digital representation of them is owned and controlled by them. Just as the primary fundamental right as a human is to own and control ones own physical body so to should this extend to the digital world we are rapidly creating.
We have a digital story that we must seize authorship of. An individual as well as collective narrative that can give us an insight into ourselves so the ongoing chapters we write through our actions reflect our deepest desires for freedom and realizing our potential.
The vision for metame is utopic in essence. Despite my awareness and acceptance of the fact that utopia is not achievable I see the stretch goal as necessary to plant the seed for a new paradigm of human social interaction in the digital age before us.
Higher level snap of the app
The aim is to allow personal individual users to have a private and secure system to capture, accumulate, store, connect with and grant permission to the sharing and sale of their personal data. User consented Sharing or Sale of this data is with “Vendors” (“metame” included) providing products or services to the user, or with other personal individual users of the application and/or the SAFE network.
Users generate this data through their interaction with network-connected devices, third party products and services and the core social features of metame.
The 3 core values integral to metame are:
Privacy – Upholding privacy for our individual users in the digital space they interact with.
Security – Ensuring access to and storage of user data is secure from intrusion by parties that have not been granted permission for use by the individual user.
Ownership – The belief that all data generated through interaction with networked devices of users should be the property of those individual users.
Further details will come but at this stage I just wanted to get the ball rolling in this community forum and indicate it is all game on.
I am setting up a blog in the next few days where I will start sharing regular insights and perspectives on what we are doing. I also have a small but enthusiastic, passionate and talented founding team who will also be engaged on here soon.
Really looking forward to getting feedback from this community and am happy to provide as much insight into what is being built as we move forward with development. Although considering the level of technical expertise on here it is likely I wont be able to clarify the lower level details just yet 
My technical brother in arms will no doubt be able to help with that in the coming weeks. 
Thanks for all the inspiration in getting me to this point!
