[neilxdsouza]

I was thinking of how the Intel cpu brought the computer into the normal household. What could bring Amazon into the household of a normal person today? What if someone decided to create a server mobile unit - no screen, no cameras, no sensors. Just a unit that can be plugged into a specially designed rack in your house/apartment.

This is a futuristic idea - think of the 80s and the 8086 has just come out, but one day you're going to challenge the mainframes. How do we make a household capable of being an Amazon

[pjc50]

How do we make a household capable of being an Amazon

Put a sysadmin in every household. Personal servers have been a thing in geek houses for decades.

We're starting to get more domestic computer appliances: PVRs, consoles, home NAS gizmos, increasingly smart routers. Nest. Smart lightbulbs. However, because very few people have the skill, time, and inclination to manage these things, they're subject to the management of their OEM. Who will do the profit-maximising thing.

[austinjp]

I suspect we'll see a new service industry spring up to provide installation and support of exactly these types of offerings. It's subtle already out there, I'm just unaware.

"Services" are wrappers around "solutions" which are wrappers around a collection of products. People generally don't want to learn to install 10 different products, or even 3 different solutions. They want one service provider, and they're happy to pay a premium for that.

[fpvracing]

I don't mean to shit on your idea, and I do find it interesting. :-) I'm curious how a household might benefit from having its own server farm. I guess decentralization could be one benefit. Can you think of others?

[neilxdsouza]

I could answer you with reasons. But in the 1980s, one would also ask - why should we enable a household to own a mainframe. But look at what we do with computers today. You could have a really smart kernel hacker/programmer running his own amazon like business. Not based out of the US and not susceptible to NSA snooping - (but his own country's intelligence agency could snoop - that's another matter altogether)