Growing up in the 90's, tech and the internet promised us open-data and open-systems. With a good idea and a bit of know-how could do most anything. And for a while that was true. But over time the systems have been slowly closed off.

Even if you put your data into their systems you can only retrieve it under their terms. If you can even retrieve it. Formats are opaque or undocumented. API access could be revoked at any time for any reason with little or no recourse on your part.

In other words: your data isn't yours. And you're certainly not free to do with it what you please. 

Why do people subject themselves to this unfair and unequal status-quo? I'd argue that it's because how people view tech, including within the tech circle, has changed. 

You can draw a line: Hackers vs The Social Network.

If you watched Hackers, Sneakers, or Wargames in high school, you likely remember that promise of open-systems and open-data. You also see that promise being reneged one company after another. You may not feel it's as important as it once was, because, let's be real, goofing around on "free" services is easy and fun.

However if your high school movie was The Social Network, you likely see the current state of tech as normal. Like a fish in water. Those VC companies neglected to mention the promise of the internet. In fact, the idea that your data is yours may not even be something that crosses your mind. Why should it? Nobody talks about it, so it must not be important. But it is.

One of my major motivations for building Tanzawa is to help us regain control of our data and help uphold the promise back.  Want to visualize your Tanzawa data for a new project? Point your project to your Tanzawa db (or make a copy of it) and you can do whatever you want.

The promise of open-systems and open-data isn't a given.  The default is closed. Or at least open until you're big enough consolidate and centralize. It's up to each of us to be stewards of an open internet. It's up to each of us support an open and free internet.

Build open systems and maintain the promise for future generations.

I was searching YouTube for a documentary about bike messengers in NYC that I downloaded ages ago and found this fantastic documentary. The actual movie I was searching for was Pedal (2001).  What's interesting is that one of the main characters in The Need for Speed, Steve "the Greek" had just started his bike messenger service and was still making runs and he also appears in Pedal, but this time as a dispatcher at his company.

These messengers have no cellphones, no gps. Just a pager (!) so they can use a payphone(!) to find out about their next run. So. Cool.