Category: Uncategorized
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More Than a Storage Device | Project Canopy
In the last post, we explored how Project Canopy could reliably reach a known node. Giving the node an identity allowed it to be recognised. PathFinder made it possible to find a practical path to reach it. But another question naturally followed. Once you’ve reached the node, what exactly have you reached? At first glance,…
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Reaching the Node | Project Canopy
In the last post, we explored why Project Canopy’s node needed an identity. A physical node gave the system somewhere to exist. An identifier gave that node a stable place inside the system. But identity only answered one question: Which node are we trying to reach? It did not answer the next one: How do…
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It Needed an Identity | Project Canopy
Once Project Canopy had a physical node, the next question was not where it would live, but how it would be recognised. A node can exist in someone’s home. It can be powered, connected, and physically owned by the user. But if it is going to participate in a wider system, the system needs a…
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The First Challenge Was Not Software | Project Canopy
Before Project Canopy could become a system, we had to answer a simpler question: What kind of device could actually carry personal infrastructure? That was one of the first practical problems we faced after the idea began moving from concept to infrastructure. At the beginning, it was tempting to think about the project mainly through…
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Introducing Project Canopy
Over the last few posts, we have written about a larger question. What happens when people no longer have a meaningful place where their own data lives? We explored how the internet changed from something people accessed through personal computers into something increasingly built around remote platforms, cloud accounts, and services that sit outside the…
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The Personal Internet
Over the past several decades, the internet has transformed how we communicate, work, learn, and share information. Entire industries have emerged because of it. Communities can form across continents. Knowledge can be accessed in seconds. For billions of people, the internet has become an essential part of everyday life. Yet despite all of this progress,…
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From Questions to Infrastructure
Throughout 2023 and 2024, much of DFLab’s public work focused on data privacy, data ownership, data autonomy, decentralised technologies, and data rights. At the time, many of these topics appeared distinct. Data privacy focused on who could access information. Ownership focused on who controlled it. Autonomy focused on whether people could act independently in the…
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The Internet Forgot Who Data Belongs To
The internet has given us incredible convenience. We can communicate instantly with people around the world, store years of photos without carrying physical media, and access our files from almost any device connected to the internet. In many ways, modern technology has made our lives easier than ever before. But somewhere along the way, something…
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What We’ve Been Building
For the past year and a half, DFLab’s public activity slowed significantly. Our blog stopped receiving regular updates in September 2024. Our Instagram and LinkedIn presence gradually became quiet throughout 2025. From the outside, it may have looked as though things had paused. Behind the scenes, however, the opposite was happening. Shifting from words to…
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Proposing a New Web Standard for Data Privacy Compliance
We are Proposing a New Web Standard for Data Privacy Compliance Current methods of communicating data privacy practices, like lengthy privacy policies, are inadequate and lack transparency. Additionally, no standardised, machine-readable format exists for automated systems to monitor compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. This draft proposal introduces data_privacy.txt, a simple, standardised text file…