The motivation behind Algernon
With the overflow of data that we are bombarded with daily, the only way for us to make sense and use this influx of information is via careful curation. Today, curation happens within walled gardens controlled by corporations who are tuning algorithms to maximize profits.
To get out of this paradigm, we need to change the data ownership model. Today, all the content we generate — the work we do on these platforms — are stored, hosted and thus owned by these corporations. To break out of these walled gardens, we the users have to be in full control of our data. We need sovereignty over our own data.
Why now?
Until now, these types of problems were thought to be unsolvable. It’s only after the advent of truly global decentralized networks that these ideas could even be thought of. Furthermore, it is not economical to build scalable applications on layer 1. Only now that Ethereum layer 2 solutions are widely launching, do these products even start to become feasible.
Revolution, not evolution
The ideas we are working on aren’t novel — in that a lot of folks in our community are already thinking about and working on them from different perspectives. As the Overton Window shift for some of these “radical” ideas, it is our hope that there will be a plethora of people working towards new models that have seemed unfathomable for so long.
Our objective is to test some of these ideas with real users. As we work in the open, we hope to add to the collective knowledge on how to build these new systems, products and communities.
Stories aren’t enough
A paradigm shift can't be explained, it has to be felt. Today, there is a general public sentiment against large tech companies; but there is no path forward in terms of reducing our dependence on these platforms.
What’s missing is a manifestation of what this future could look like. The objective of this project is to give people a glimpse of a world in which they truly own their data. We are starting by building a simple application.
The fundamental novelty is that -- we are building a product where the user owns the content they create on it. By giving these rights back to users, they will have the ability to choose which website or product they give access to display this content.
Join us on this path.
