Thank you Anna da Costa for your comment on the last article! It really got me thinking.
BioRegional Data Centers
I propose that we host our digital identities on a federated network of OpenSource software servers, hosted in data centers with BioRegional awareness and Permaculture ethics.
We have everything we need.
Ozarks, Cascadia, are you ready?
Or perhaps, Indigenous Tribes are ready?
We can take back our digital sovereignty as a BioRegion — as a Tribe.
We can own the full stack, all the way to a local sustainable microgrid.
I touched on this topic before in other posts, but more details are bubbling up now.
Now is the time
I’ve seen the whole stack of web development, from the underground server room to the frontend web client. I’ve seen a huge range of development styles, from rigid corporate sprints to vibe-coded passion projects.
We have everything we need.
OpenSource is winning.
Love is winning.
Would you move your digital identity to one of these if they existed? How much would you be able to pay to help with the hosting costs? I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments!
I like this idea from an ethical perspective but in our inquiry into building sustainable community, the costs involved in creating the infrastructure to support just a couple tiny houses on land that is currently raw is eyebrow raising. Much less trying to power them all without reliance on the grid.
Data centers are resource intensive, both in terms of initial build, but also in energy draw over time, and the energy draw needs to be very consistent all hours.
Centralization of infrastructure like this actually comes with logical efficiency gains. In principle I support this, in terms of feasibility it feels like a moon shot without some serious capital and strong skilled collaborative networks, ie another corporation
This raises some interesting ideas. You already see this with things like city focused Mastodon servers, but those are almost always run through donations.
What would be interesting would be trying out a regional hosting service built on a co-op model. Co-op members could be the workers, or the workers and the clients.