Date and time: Tuesday 13 January 2026, 10:00-11:00 CET
Speaker: Jon Crowcroft, University of Cambridge
Title: Re-decentralization
Where: to be announced
Host: Carlo Fischione carlofi@kth.se
Bio: Jonathan Crowcroft is the Marconi Professor of Communications Systems in the Computer Lab at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, and the Chair of the Program Committee at the Alan Turing Institute. Crowcroft is a leading figure in computer networks and distributed systems. He is credited with fundamental contributions to rural broadband, helping extend the Internet to multimedia, and founding the field of opportunistic networking.
Among his honors, Crowcroft was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was named an ACM Fellow (2002) for contributions to the design and analysis of network protocols and for technical leadership. He received the ACM SIGCOMM Award for Lifetime Contribution (2009) for pioneering contributions to multimedia and group communications.
Abstract: Redecentralization is a growing trend. However, the truth is that the competition (hyperscale/cloud) wins on most dimensions users care about (usability, availability, resilience). However, central systems lose potentially on privacy and sustainability (neither of which most users care about). Can we fix this (either way)?
