This idea isn’t a tip or suggestion, it’s actually an idea I’ve been mulling over the past few months. When I look a few years down the road it just makes sense to me that eventually everyone will have a personal server. It may very well be a shared and hosted server, but it will be a server that individual people own and operate nonetheless.
There are a few reasons I think this is going to happen:
- The desktop of course, is dying, but that doesn’t mean that people won’t still want to own and keep their personal data themselves. I really do think that the current crop of Web 2.0 companies that store customer’s data on their servers are just a stopgap measure. I also want to keep all my data in one place–right now I have a tendancy to forget which site I used to create something and I lose track of it.
- Personal servers will aggregate not only files and data, but communication as well. They will combine email, IM, and phone communication in one central location. One address, one place to go to find you. Mine will be located right here, at jasonkolb.com.
- They open up the possibility of carrying your personal server, or an extension of it, with you on your physical person. The reason this is so exciting is because it enables biometric authentication that doesn’t require shipping your biometric data to a third party (which I think is a terrible idea). Just look at products like the Blackdog personal server and you’ll see what I’m talking about. I would assume that down the road this type of technology will be built into your phone/Blackberry.
I did a whole series of posts relating to this topic while back (the series actually isn’t finished yet, I’m waiting to have a working proof of concept to publish the last post, which is already written). Whether you agree with the idea of personal servers or not, it definitely doesn’t hurt to think about it and consider the ramifications.
Part of the 60 Ideas in 60 Days series. Click here for the rest of the ideas.
