All your photos, chats, e-mails, messages, health data (eventually all your data) into a single database, which can be distributed onto multiple removable 'volumes' (disks).
Plug in the volume and the db index is seamlessly merged and queries run on all the connected volumes. No files. No cloud. Data on your disks only.
There are processing nodes that run in the background indexing the content, finding people and locations in the pictures, chats.
It allows you to build up a fully search-able archive of all your data, which you can physically keep in a locker or safe.
But also, if you store and keep all your data on disks that you control, then many of the services that we use could just run as local apps on your server, reading and writing from your archive via an API.
Social apps are just two people's archives sharing content between each other, no 3rd party services required.
I worked a lot on it until about 1.5 months ago, when I got discouraged by how hard and big this project is. Breaking up with my girlfriend around that time did not help either.
But now I see you mention it and it's kind of inspiring, since I've been doing a lot of thinking and gathering strength for another crack at getting a prototype out.
It would be interesting to see what other people have been thinking/doing in this area.
But since there's at least one person who wants it, I might actually jump back to work ;) Thank you !