Decentralizing the Internet needs to be in-browser

Oh my, the inner platform effect is strong with this one.

> When I (or anyone else) am on the web, I’m always in-browser.

How long did it take you to figure that one out?

The infrastructure of the internet is not broken and it never was - it is inherently P2P to begin with, and we've only constructed these centralized models on top of it - the chief suspect being the web/web server. Yes, the web is broken, how does that lead to operating-system-phobia?

> Personally, I don’t want foreign software interacting with other outside sources running on my computer at all times.

What do you think that JavaScript that powers interactivity on the web is doing: it's foreign invasive software which you don't even get to decide whether or not you'd like to run (bar installing browser add-ons).

> While this work is influential, P2P isn’t part of the web, and the need to install proprietary apps creates added friction

This is backwards: The P2P apps are free software, but the JavaScript you're downloading and running is mostly proprietary, and you can't decide to not run it.

The browser is the most invasive software you can get on a modern computer - it wants to do everything - literally to the point where it is attempting to hijack the OS.

There's still plenty it can't do though - it can't interact with other software on the host machine - or even other web apps hosted on different servers. The browser is a walled garden which does not let information out onto a user's machine, bar them clicking "download".

At best, we can install a local web server on the machine, navigate to some pages it hosts via the browser, and have the web server translate HTTP requests into some more meaningful OS interaction - thereby escaping the web.

And no, re-writing all of our software to be web based is not a solution to this problem. The web should be augmenting our operating systems, not replacing them.