El Supuesto: IPFS and PermaWeb
Can you imagine what would happen if Instagram went down tomorrow and never came back? How many memories would you lose?
I think a lot about the fragility of our knowledge, our multimedia, our art. Will our cultural icons persist 2,000 years from now, just like those of the Olmecs and the Romans? Well, let me tell you that there are many brilliant people in the world developing technologies that offer answers to questions like these, and to much more tangible problems like journalist censorship.
One of my favorite technologies is called the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and it is a distributed file system that aims to create a (more) permanent and decentralized web. In IPFS, we don’t use URLs to locate content; instead, we use CIDs, which point directly to content (not to pages). When a user requests data, the IPFS network searches for the data across multiple nodes and retrieves it from the node closest to the user. This means that data is not stored on a single server, but is distributed across many nodes, making it more resistant to censorship, data loss, and other vulnerabilities of centralized systems.
Another project whose idea I really like is PermaWeb. Its concept is simple: create web pages that are permanent — once something is published, it stays on the web forever. This plays a valuable role in use cases that require resistance to censorship or information manipulation.
These technologies have garnered significant attention in recent years due to their potential to revolutionize the way we store and share data online. They are especially important for preserving critical and valuable information, such as legal documents, scientific research, and digital art. By using IPFS or PermaWeb technology, we avoid dependence on centralized servers and ensure that data remains available even if the original servers go down or disappear.