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About the Book
The Data Universe™ is a large-scale, distributed, content-addressable, secure data storage and resource sharing system.
Large-Scale Conceptual memory address space is greater than 2^128 bits. If every person on earth shot uncompressed video for 1000 years it would not use a meaningful fraction of this storage capability.
Distributed Every computer on the Internet is welcome to, and would benefit from, sharing resources in the Data Universe.
Content-Addressable All data is broken into manageable size blocks which are given a unique identifier based on their content. This identifier allows blocks to be copied and retrieved as needed throughout the network.
Secure Data Storage(1) All data blocks automatically replicate to other computers, eliminating the need for specific backups. Secure Data Storage(2) All data blocks may retrieved by any computer in the network, eliminating the possibility that computer or network failure would leave the data inaccessible.
Corollary: "The [network will interpret] censorship as damage and route around it." -- John Gilmore
Secure Data Storage(3) All data blocks may be optionally encrypted for privacy. Secure Data Storage(4) All data blocks are identified by their actual content, making it "computationally infeasible" to corrupt, revise or spoof data entered into the Universe. Subsequent versions of a file or document will have new, unique, identifiers and all versions will co-exist and be accessible within the Universe.
Resource Sharing Resources include: (1) Disk space, (2) Processing Distributed Queries, (3) General Computational Capability, and (4) Network communication bandwidth.
About the Author
Brian McMillin is a technologist and inventor. He does hardware and software design and prototyping using the forerunners of many of the tools discussed in this book. He enjoys astronomy, caving, flying, photography, and scuba diving -- rarely at the same time. He lives in Keller, Texas, with his wife, their four demanding cats and three jealous but confused dogs.
Brian's blog can be found at http://bkmcm.blogspot.com/