Summary

Not many years ago, some researcher created the vision of the 'data utility' as a key enabler towards ubiquitous and pervasive computing. As for the water and power grid, there should be a utility infrastructure, designed for worldwide availability, providing continuous access to persistent information. Such utility service should provide appropriate guarantees in terms of security, data availability and survivability, and performance independent of location from which it is accessed. Decentralization and replication would be the approach to make it resistant against security attacks. Several projects have explored (and still are exploring) the feasibility of the vision, each having a different emphasis on individual features such as data durability, uniform geographic access, privacy and support for uncensorship, mobility support, or other.