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DINRG Workshop (Interim Meeting) on the Centralization in the Internet
We are planning an online workshop for the start of June that is intended to enable a principled discussion on Centralization in the Internet and its root causes.
Motivation
The networking community generally seems to agree that the Internet consolidation and centralization trend has progressed rapidly over the last few years, bringing impactful societal and economical consequences. To counter that trend, multiple studies and activities have been launched to decentralize the Internet and the Web (for example see https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/IHPbriefs_decentralization_March_2017.pdf, https://solidproject.org/, and https://www.decentralizedweb.net/, plus various Blockchain-inspired approaches).
When the internet started as a completely decentralized system 40 years back, at that time perhaps few people, if any, could have foreseen where it is today. How did we get from there to here? What is driving aggregation and centralization in the Internet? What are the implications for industry actors and technology as well as for users/consumers?
We believe that a good understanding of this question could make a good first step towards understanding whether it is possible/feasible, and if so, how, to steer the Internet away from centralization.
Objectives
The objective of this workshop is to start an open discussion on the above question to help clearly characterize centralization in the Internet and to discuss its root causes. That is, before jumping to discussing various potential solutions, we suggest taking a step back and discussing how we got from there to here, and what were the driving forces and enablers at each stage.
We believe that a sound and evidence-based understanding is of key importance for devising any effective form of remedy and action plan. In particular, we would like to foster an understanding on the relationship of architectural properties and economic developments. For example,
- whether any architectural features, or lack of them, made an impact on the internet ecosystem developments and business models; and
- from a retrospective view, was there anything that might have been done differently, to have an impact on the course the Internet has taken?
This is a complex problem with many relevant factors (technical and economic) and historic developments, so we would like to invite contributions on all of these aspects to this first workshop which may likely lead to further in-depth follow-up discussion. A result of this workshop could indeed be a more substantiated agenda for more focused future research in DINRG.
How to Contribute
Please send a message until May 16th EOB to dinrg-chairs@xxxxxxxx if you are interested to contribute to the workshop. We ask that you include a 1-page abstract (no special formatting requirements) of your intended contribution that would help us to to categorize inputs and to have a record of the different perspectives in the workshop proceedings (DINRG meeting material).
Format
- DINRG online interim meeting, with open participation
- 3 hours duration with one break
- Lightning talks on different aspects of the problem
- Ample time for discussion
Logistics
- Date and time: Thursday, June 3rd 2021 1900 UTC, 21:00 CEST / 05:00 AEST (Fri) / 12:00 PDT / 09:00 HST (tentatively)
- Duration: 3 hours with a break in the middle
- MeetEcho (Online as an IRTF DINRG meeting) -- details TBA on DINRG list
