002
id: zx3s5casme1d8pz1c3pp6te title: '002' desc: '' updated: 1662595639431 created: 1662595637385
dentropyDaemon 002 Servers and the Internet's Application Paradime
Hello world, this is Paul aka dentropy coming at you again. Today I wish to discuss the Internet's application paradime and why you might want to run apps on your own server. There are almost no applications on ones phone that work without a internet connection. Our photos and notes are backed up and managed on the cloud. Our email and files are stored in the cloud. Social media, meal delivery, ride hailing services, and payment apps require internet for obvious reasons. Our phones are not really running apps but actually function as clients for server applications. The fact that most apps are not just websites frustrates me to no end, but that is a rant for another time. Your apps do not really run on your phone it is just a client for an app actually running in the cloud.
Now think about the data you trust to your apps. Very few apps encrypt the data their store for users. The way you know your data is encrypted is if you forget your password you lost your data. Examples of apps that are encrypted are element instant messenger, protonmail and other encrypted email apps, whatsapp, mega file storage, and of course all those password managers. Every other app stores your data on their servers unencrypted in a way that can be looked by anyone with access to the right server. All your photos on iCloud, facebook, flicker, and Google Photos can be looked at by people with the right credentials. All your emails, facebook messages, text messages, and linkedin messages can be seen by people with the right credentials.
This brings us to running apps on your own server, self hosting. You can self host your own notes, file sync, photo sharing, and social media applications on your own server. Your might wonder why would you want to run your own apps? I have three reasons for you, privacy, agency, and a digital second brain. Let's start with privacy, as we discussed earlier your apps really run in the cloud therefore if you do not want your data sitting on someone else's server you need to run your own apps on your own server. Many apps today have black box recommendation algorithms as a feature, when your run your own apps you can tune the recommendation algorithm because you control it giving your more agency over your digital persona. Lastly one needs a personal server if they want to create an effective second brain. My digital second brain is spread our across around 300 accounts and apps I have made across my life. I want to have all that data managed in a single place where I can write queries, generate graphs, and perform natural language processing across my entire digital self. I desire to generate an algorithmic reflection of my biases, interests, behaviors, attributes, skills, thoughts, relationships, questions, heuristics in a single system so I can exit my self destructive loops and walk in the direction of self actualization.
Any feedback on this rant would be really appreciated.