As some of you know and most of the others who read this blog might have guessed, I am partially involved with a project called Wuala. Wuala is a distributed storage solution, originally developed at the Federal Technical University in Zürich. Now you might wonder why I am helping Wuala? The reason for me to support the project is that I believe that it is socially relevant in a double sense. But to explain you, why this is the case, I have to give you a short idea how Wuala works.
Wuala is a system which allows you to store files online. You can store files of any file type, be it pictures, movies or PDFs and files of any size. Furthermore Wuala allows you to decide if you want to share a file with specific friends only or if you want to make the file public. Since all files are encrypted before they leave your computer, sharing a file with some friends only actually means just that. No one, not even the Wuala team can access you private and shared files. And most importantly, Wuala does all that for free.
You might wonder how they do that. Well probably you don’t. Youtube is free after all. But Youtube is not actually earning money. The company only exists because Google is ready to bet money now that it will be profitable on some day in the future. I would not even bet too much money that a company like Flickr is profitable and they only handle images, which are a lot smaller than videos. And do not forget; Youtube and Flickr both force you to compromise on quality. Youtube has a maximum resolution for videos and Flickr does not allow you to upload RAW files, which is what most professional photographers use. With Wuala you do not have to take these compromises.
So how do they do it? If you want more storage you can either invite your friends to use Wuala or share some of your hard disc space. When you share hard disc space parts of files will be stored on your computer and when you are online these files will be downloaded from your computer instead of a central server. For that you get more online space and Wuala is able to reduce its online traffic. In most Western countries ADSL connections have unlimited traffic. That means you can up- and download as much as you like. This gives us the illusion that traffic is free. But this is not the case. For a project like Youtube the most expensive part of infrastructure is online traffic. Therefore reducing traffic means reducing costs massively and therefore Wuala can offer you a free service you will not get anywhere else.
Now that should be enough technicalities for the moment. So why is Wuala socially relevant. First of all Wuala is one of the first services to offer us more privacy instead of less privacy. Remember, a project like Youtube is not profitable right now. That means Google will have to put more advertisement on Youtube. But that is only one point. More importantly Google will have to data mine your use of Youtube in more detail to show you more relevant advertisement. They are creating a social profile of you. They do it with Gmail and Google Docs and they will or already do include data gathered on Youtube. If a company like Google or Microsoft would actually offer a service as comprehensive as Wuala they would have to analyse your data in detail. The CEO of Sun Microsystems is supposed to have said once: “Privacy is dead, deal with it.” If you disagree however and believe that privacy is also relevant in the digital age, services like Wuala will be key to protect this privacy.
Secondly Wuala means the democratisation of media distribution. There has been much talk about the media revolution caused by blogs and Youtube and so on. But if quality is relevant to you, Youtube is just not an option. However, if you are a young movie maker or video artist from the developing world you might not have another viable option these days. Now one could argue that the quality on Youtube is consistently getting better. But do not believe that this quality will ever be par with other distribution channels. First of all Youtube is not even profitable now and secondly the size of a movie files is growing squared relative to the rise in quality. That means when the resolution is double, the file is four times as big, which of course equals four times as much traffic and therefore four times the cost. Wuala however does not have this problem. Therefore Wuala for the first time gives equal access to distribution to all artists in less privileged countries. Of course this access to distribution is also open to anyone in Europe who was too sub-culutre before to be picked up by traditional distribution channels. That means that Wuala is a central tool in the democratisation of distribution of large files.
In conclusion, Wuala is at the same time supporting a renewed protection of privacy of the individual and opening our cultural sphere to previously unheard voices. Yes, one of the founders of Wuala is one of my very best friends. But the reason why I am supporting Wuala is this dual relevance for our society as a whole.
Below a picture of the Wuala team in the offices in Zürich:
Can these two issues really be “solved” by technical means?
As of now, who in “our society” (what is that by the way?) cares passionately enough about them to use Wuala in this way? I mean, check out this weeks most popular tags…
You surprise me. Can these things be solved by technical means? Yes of course. Why? Because they are only about technical issues. Distribution channels are a factor dictated by technology. First ice was mined on the poles and transported to Europe, later it was created in factories and finally freezers were invented. This changed the distribution channel of ice. That is singularly a technical question. And the distribution of opinions is no different.
For the question of privacy. Privacy became an issue because of technology. Before the technology for large scale “privacy infringement” and “personality mining” became available, you could only do it by employing thousands of informants and even then you would end up with hard to handle data rubbish. Today you can do all that automatically, being a private company. Thankfully slowly there seems to be a pull back. The German constitutional court just decided that the general protection of privacy extends to the digital world, which very well might have massive implication. (Check the new SPIEGEL, p. 42-3.
Regarding the current use of Wuala, of course I agree that we are not there yet regarding cultural items. Regarding privacy it is hard to tell, as no one knows what kind of private files people save on Wuala. And the majority of Wuala use is private/shared files, not public files.
I do not believe this is purely a technical issue. To me it seems to be more about values than anything else, your example of the German constitutional court being a case in point: it values privacy highly, and so says it needs to be protected online as well.
You value privacy highly so you support a tool like wuala. Many people do not take this issue quite so seriously ,otherwise who would use a supercard?
A less hierarchical distribution of opinions or art etc. can be made possible via technological means but again the preferences (or values) of users might still create different (cultural) groups with hardly any exchange between them.
I mean, for the interested few it is already possible (though maybe not very easy) to gain access to opinions or whatever outside of their “cultural sphere”, isn’t it? Again, you are someone who values this exchange highly and would therefore like to see this “democratisation” made easier by certain tools.
PS.Why are you surprised? You know that as a *koff* “philosopher I cannot let someone say the world can be made a better place by some gadget! We need to THINK differently first!
Ok. Sure. Values are important. As already mentioned in my copyright post the majority of people does not care about issues which are very important for them. Privacy, patents and copy right. It seems sometimes as if it would be necessary to join the pirate party – in my case of course the “Deutsche Piratenpartei”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party)
However the issue is at the same time about values and about technology. Sure. One could get access to most things in some way. But it used to be difficult, because the classical distribution channels had “limited shelf space”. And therefore they catered mainly for the majority. Or at least for what they perceived that the majority would want.
A democratisation of distribution and consumption of media, but of course that also includes paparazzi shots, has been made possible by the internet. I don’t think this can be questioned. While the values determine the content, the technology determines the possibility.
The same goes for privacy of course. People don’t give a shit. But when remembering that it was mainly technology which had this massively negative effect on our privacy we can understand that the solution must come from technology as well. If this solution is in the end embraced by society is a question of values.
And again. I am still surprised at you singular perspective. Looking at wars values probably changed only very little. However changing technology (sword versus cluster bombs) had a massive effect on the real character of war. In the same sense technology can have a central and important impact regarding privacy and distribution of media.
“…when remembering that it was mainly technology which had this massively negative effect on our privacy we can understand that the solution must come from technology as well.”
Well, to be precise, it was people using (or abusing) the possibilities of a new technology that caused what you see as a problem.
Why MUST the solution come from new technology? I do not see the necessity in that argument. The solution (if there can ever be a “complete solution” to anything) would be if the technical means are USED in such a way as to, e.g., protect your privacy. (Assuming that a NEW technology is even necessary).
To be honest I do not quite understand the point you are trying to make with your last example concerning war. Are the ways more “sophisticated” weapons change warfare (and geopolitics) really comparable to the changes you want to make with wuala?
And also: if technolgical problems can be solved with new technology, and assuming the cluster bomb is a problem, what is your tech. solution?
“Are the ways more “sophisticated” weapons change warfare (and geopolitics) really comparable to the changes you want to make with wuala?”
Ok. Isn’t there a German saying which basically states, that it is a comparison because when looking closer it doesn’t really work out. I was trying to say that technology can have an effect, positive or negative, even if values remain the same. The human race seems to have a rather unchanged attitude towards war, however the change of war technologies has made wars worse. Of course values are relevant, but when trying to explain why modern wars kill so many more people the reason is not a change of values, but a change of technology. The main idea of the comparison was to question your monocausal focus on values. And no, currently no technical solution to cluster bombs comes to mind.
Of course you are right. We can change this problem by other means than technology. E.g. we can just all convert and become Amish. This would eliminate the issue of tech reduced privacy immediately. However it seems rather obvious that this will not happen. People are not ready to give up the new conveniences brought by technology. We will face the same issue regarding global warming. Therefore the solution which will at the same time guarantee these new conveniences and reduce the unacceptable side effects will have to be more technology – which possibly has new side effects, but hey, that is the point of evolution.
I did not claim that technology has no impact on our lives, I was only disputing YOUR monocausal claim that technology alone can solve things.
In assessing the consequences and/ or necessity of a new technology an analysis of the prevailing values seems to me to be essential.
The reason why we need technological answers to certain environmental issues is because of how highly we rate our lifestyle. Hybrid cars etc. are seen as an acceptable development because changing peoples perceptions about how cool and “sexy” cars are is considered to be a lot more difficult (if not impossible).
Haha. We have reached a gridlock now regarding who was arguing monocausal first. I completely agree with the second part though. Exactly the point I tried to make.
[...] copyright, my comment about the necessity to build a network of repositories, my discussion about Wuala? The German Bundestag seems as worried as I am about the heritage of movies (German). The Deutsche [...]
Interesting discussion and Wuala is the best file storage/manage tool I’ve ever seen (although I and lots of people I know prefer to have more privacy on the internet, privacy is not the only advantage of Wuala)