Profile: Unigrid co-founder Evan Green
Craig Wilson from the Unigrid team interviews Evan Green. We take a quick dive and explore what motivates Evan to push for more decentralized, free and open Internet.
What is your origin story? I.e. what interested you in technology?
My interest in technology goes back to my early youth. When I was very young, my father built me and my brother an old Apple II. My life was forever changed from that moment on. At about 8 years old I started learning to program from that machine. I knew from an early age that these machines would have a profound effect on the world and wanted to work as closely as possible with the ever-changing technology.
When was the first time you used the internet? How did you react to it?
My first experience was during college in the early '90s; I had a dial-up connection. There was something fascinating about knowing you were in one location connecting to a server in another place. It was all so new at that time as more companies were trying to make the push to get people online.
Why do you enjoy the internet?
The most enjoyable part of the internet for me is the knowledge sharing. I have learned so much over the years through the good graces of others who share their knowledge. I likely wouldn't know as much about programming as I do today if it had not been for online guides and or documentation.
What kind of issues do you see with the internet?
The current internet iteration is set up to allow for too much control by a minority of entities. We as consumers, are at the mercy of these entities to give us the best service and privacy without having much say. There is also a big problem with data redundancy and location-based content delivery. For the most part, the delivery of content on the internet is sent from centralized servers that could be thousands of miles away from your current location. We have to do the work to make our data redundant manually and backed up online.
Why are you building Unigrid?
Building things is what I love to do. Knowing that what we build here at Unigrid could impact so many people's lives drives me. An Alan Watts quote that changed how I focused my life many years ago is, "It's better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.".