Merge pull request #209 from threefoldfoundation/development

Publishing recent blog posts

content/blog/digital_twin/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+---
+id: digital_twin
+title: "What is a Digital Twin?"
+image_caption: "What is a Digital Twin?"
+description: In the current Internet system, each of us exists many times, each application provider owns our data while offering functionality they own. We become the user. We become the product. Instead, what if we were at the center of our digital lives?
+date: 2022-10-18
+taxonomies:
+  people: [victoria_obeegadoo]
+  tags: [threefold_grid, technology, peer_to_peer, threefold_cloud]
+  categories: [foundation]
+extra:
+  imgPath: digital_twin.png
+---
+
+# What is a Digital Twin?
+
+In the current Internet system, each of us exists many times, each application provider owns _our_ data while offering functionality _they_ own. We become the user. We become the product. Instead, what if we were at the center of our digital lives?
+
+<br>
+ 
+The Web4 Digital Twin architecture does just that: it puts us at the center of our digital experience. Indeed, Digital Twin is a user-centric technological platform to build efficient, sovereign and secure digital experiences. Digital Twin technology empowers people and businesses to exchange information and value without any intermediaries, while making applications more scalable, efficient and secure than on any other web paradigm such as Web2, Web3 or Web5. Digital Twins require a decentralized Internet infrastructure and run perfectly on top of the ThreeFold Grid.
+ 
+## Your Digital Twin is a mirror of yourself!
+ 
+Your Digital Twin runs on a location of your choice, which becomes your personal Internet Gateway. Each Twin is owned by only one owner, who in the end is more like the human mirror to the Twin. The Twin has lots of capabilities and is available for its “human mirror” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Experiences are being built which use the capabilities of the Twin. A Twin owns your data and your identity, all stored in such a way it can never be corrupted or lost. Thus, you own your data, your identity and your digital skills for all your life.
+ 
+## Your Digital Twin has Capabilities
+ 
+Twins are powerful and have many capabilities which are used when they enter an experience. Here are the capabilities of the Digital Twin:
+ 
+* Communicate
+   * Chat, video conference, send messages to anyone.
+* Create
+   * Create content, any content (metaverse, video, websites, ...)
+* Share and Promote
+   * Share your creations to the rest of the world
+   * Promote your products and services
+   * Share your knowledge and help others to grow
+* Discover and Learn
+   * Find information, alternative indexing engine (neutral)
+   * Know what is truthful and what is not (proof of authenticity)
+   * Learn and become smarter
+* Economy
+   * Manage my digital wealth (digital currencies)
+   * Exchange anything for anything else (money for tokens, services, products)
+   * Buy/Sell goods and services
+* Collaborate
+   * How can I collaborate on documents, images, videos, code, ...
+   * How can I manage a project, plan events, define deadlines
+* Organize
+   * Manage your agenda and time
+   * Organize your digital content so you can find it back, and it's nicely organized
+   * Manage your circles (groups of people)
+* Protect
+   * Make sure that only the right people have access to your digital assets
+   * What happens if you die, make sure your loved ones can inherit your digital assets
+   * Make sure your digital life is secure (give access to your assets to your circles)
+   * Give proof of authenticity to assets and information from others
+* Develop and Expand
+   * Code and extend the Twin (improve Twin capabilities for yourself and others)
+   * Create your own experiences
+ 
+<br>
+ 
+The Twin has basic capabilities listed above which are strongly version controlled, but contributions from the global community are more than welcomed. The idea is to create a system which is simply good enough for any possible experience.
+ 
+<br>
+ 
+![Your Digital Twin](./your_digital_twin.png)
+ 
+<br>
+ 
+This is a very different paradigm compared to current web or mobile applications where capabilities are owned by the provider of the application. Besides, rather than survival of the fittest, we believe in a system of collaboration, where we invite everyone to make the system better so it fits us all. We don't need three chat systems, we need one which is usable by thousands of experiences.
+ 
+<br>
+ 
+Developers can create experiences re-using the open source capabilities the Twin offers, also eliminating the need to reinvent features.
+ 
+## Note on Connection & Security
+ 
+As a “user”, you can use any browser to access experiences built on top of your Digital Twin. For example, a storage experience that stores data on your Twin or a browser experience that allows you to surf the web from your Twin's node. When you connect to your Twin, our **[ThreeFold Connect](https://library.threefold.me/info/threefold#/web4/threefold__threefold_connect)** makes sure that the connection is secure. The Twin runs on a node on the ThreeFold Grid, which you are securely connected to. This takes care of a very safe approach and unlimited scalability. We will dive deeper into the Twin’s security and scalability aspects in a future blog!
+ 
+## Digital Twin in a nutshell
+ 
+Hopefully, by now you will have a better understanding of the Digital Twin concept. Here is a short recap of everything mentioned so far about it:
+ 
+* You have full control over your own digital life.
+* Experiences can be created using standard web & native technologies.
+* The Digital Twin delivers the web interface to your (secure) browser.
+* No need for information to travel to central data centers, all communication is fast and private between Digital Twins: No more client-server.
+* All logic of your digital life is 100% private to you running in your Twin.
+* This is super efficient and sustainable, +10x power savings.
+* No blockchain required for your digital life = more privacy, performance, green
+   * Exception: blockchain is needed for digital currencies and as a phone book for Digital Twin’s identity.
+ 
+<br>
+ 
+If you would like to see what the current iteration of the Digital Twin looks like, [try it out](https://demo.freeflow.life/) yourself with [FreeFlow Twin](https://freeflow.life/) in its current beta version! Connect with ThreeFold on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/threefold_io), [Telegram](https://t.me/threefold), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/threefold-foundatiooon/), and [Reddit](https://reddit.com/r/threefold) to join our community and stay updated about evolutions of the ThreeFold project and Digital Twin.

content/blog/tech_as_a_tool_for_humanity/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+---
+id: tech_as_a_tool_for_humanity
+title: "Technology as a Tool for Humanity"
+image_caption: "Technology as a Tool for Humanity"
+description: While technology has had an important role in the creation of today’s societies, it might have an even greater role for our future. Two opposite pictures could be painted - a utopia or a dystopia. Technology should not be a tool to extort humanity, but one at the service of humanity.
+date: 2022-10-28
+taxonomies:
+  people: [victoria_obeegadoo]
+  tags: [threefold_grid, technology, peer_to_peer, threefold_cloud, why]
+  categories: [foundation]
+extra:
+  imgPath: tech_as_a_tool_for_humanity.png
+---
+
+# Technology as a tool for humanity
+
+Technology… In today’s world, technology holds a central role. Younger generations in developed countries grow up amidst technological wonders of all sorts, truly immersed in an evolving digital landscape. Any information is a click away, offering immense intellectual capital unlike ever before – and on the other hand, great distraction, misinformation, and potential for division.
+
+<br>
+
+Technology is a word dating back to the early 17th century, formed from the Greek _tekhnologia_ meaning ‘systematic treatment,’ itself formed from _tekhnē_ meaning ‘art, craft.’ Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word technology may also mean the product of such an endeavor, as it is mostly used today.
+
+<br>
+
+As technologies enter our world they either add on incrementally to already existing technologies (i.e., tablets) or shake everything up (i.e., television). Technology can be found in most industries and at different levels, ranging from vehicles to home appliances, passing through healthcare, education, and even entertainment. Sometimes technology replaces human labor by replicating it, other times it facilitates processes and makes labor less intensive. Some technology even surpasses human precision.
+
+<br>
+
+While technology has had an important role in the creation of today’s societies, it might have an even greater role for our future. Two opposite pictures could be painted: a utopia or a dystopia. The utopia of a world full of values-driven, well-constructed technologies promises an increased quality of life for all, with digital tools which, for instance, could provide or enable equal educational opportunities for all, mobility everywhere, a universal basic income and the promise of never having to work again (e.g. in the sense of wage labor).
+
+<br>
+
+On the other hand, a dystopia could be the result of reckless technological advancement. Questions are raised, like, will most jobs be dominated by artificial intelligence (AI) in 20 years? Will privacy become a myth, with personal data being controlled by a handful? Will consumerism rule societies and reinforce social struggles?
+
+<br>
+
+One technology that has been slowly taking the dystopian route is the Internet. While major Internet and Cloud infrastructure advancements were made since the beginning of the millennium through hyper-scale data centers, the current Internet infrastructure model has many flaws:
+
+<br>
+
+- **It is centralized**: The GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) own 80% of the global compute, storage and network infrastructures. Also the global infrastructure is concentrated in the U.S in large majority, as well as Europe and China.
+
+- **It is inefficient**: Most of the data centers are located in the U.S, forcing the rest of the world to connect via Internet sea cables and having their data flowing outside of their borders and back.
+
+- **It is not scalable**: Emerging technologies require the global Internet infrastructure to triple in size in the next 4 years. It took 20+ years to build the current Internet infrastructure. So, we need to build 3 times more in 5 times less time.
+
+- **It is not affordable**: It costs billions of dollars and enormous amounts of energy and time to build, manage and productize hyper-scale data centers. Only the richest countries in the world build data centers and the rest of the world become their clients.
+
+- **It is not private**: Anyone can access Google Chrome or Facebook for free. But as outlined by movies such as the Social Dilemma or The Great Hack, if it is free, you are the product. The web’s Ad model is threatening our privacy and the net neutrality of the global internet.
+
+- **It is not secure**: The current IT stack depends on human error and it has been considered as the major cause of cybersecurity breaches with more than 95% of the cases. Human errors allow attackers to access encrypted channels and sensitive information
+
+- **It is not sustainable:** Data centers are extremely power hungry, consuming over 2 trillion gigabytes of storage and consuming around 205 TWh - More than the State of New York. According to statistics, the Internet consumes between 10-20% of global energy resources.
+
+- **It cannot support future demand:** To meet projected demand for 2022, more than 4,000 new data centers, costing an estimated $5 trillion, will be needed to build and consume an additional 400 GW/h. This is roughly equivalent to Japan’s energy consumption and would place an impossible strain on the global electricity grid. The rising demand for Internet storage is already causing hardware shortages and price hikes.
+
+<br>
+
+At ThreeFold, we want to encourage the creation of a utopian future driven by thoughtful technology. Our founders took part in the way the Internet was created, full of beautiful promises, and have seen first-hand how those promises have been corrupted throughout its evolution. By building a new Internet infrastructure from scratch, ThreeFold goes back to those original promises while having learnt from the development mistakes.
+
+<br>
+
+Kristof, our CEO, [wrote in a blog](https://medium.com/@despiegk/once-upon-a-time-only-30-years-ago-an-experiment-started-called-the-internet-5251e0da6a76):
+
+> "The Internet allows the expansion of our village life to become a global community. It allows us to act as a global tribe with all information at our fingertips, it offers the possibility to get equal access to all planet resources. It has the promise for global free communication, instant availability of information, unlimited opportunities for growth and education. But what happened to our Beautiful Internet?"
+
+> "The Internet allowed us to become more efficient in depriving mother earth from her resources. It allowed us to become more addicted to immediate gratification, examples are social media networks and the adult entertainment industry. Beautiful new possibilities like digital currencies became a gambling game and a source of wealth for the smartest hackers. The communication capabilities of the Internet allowed the few to manipulate the many."
+
+<br>
+
+By putting people, planet and authenticity at the core of the development of our technology, we want to gift societes a remade internet. Features of this technology include sovereignty & decentralization, security & privacy, unlimited scalability, green & self healing properties, cost effectiveness, and reliability. The human is put at the center of our Internet model.
+
+<br>
+
+Technology should not be a tool to extort humanity, but one at the service of humanity.

content/people/victoria_obeegadoo/index.md

@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ extra:
   countries: [Netherlands, Mauritius, Nomad]
   cities: [Amsterdam, Moka, Nomad]
   private: 0
+  memberships: [foundation, twin, aci_members]
   socialLinks:
     {
       LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-obeegadoo,
@@ -16,7 +17,6 @@ extra:
     }
   taxonomies:
     people: [victoria_obeegadoo]
-    memberships: [foundation, twin, aci_members]
     categories: [foundation, twin, aci]
 ---
 

templates/people/single.html

@@ -38,11 +38,13 @@
                     </ul>
                 </div>
             </div>
+            {% if page.taxonomies.memberships %}
             {% for tag in page.taxonomies.memberships %}
                 <a href="{{'/memberships/' ~ tag | replace(from='_', to='-' )}}" class="border-1 font-light text-xs bg-transparent hover:text-blue-700 py-2 px-4 mr-2 border hover:border-blue-500 border-gray-600 text-gray-700 rounded-full ">
                     {{tag}}
                 </a>
             {% endfor %}
+            {% endif %}
         </div>
     </div>
     <div class="my-8">