The New Internet

Avery Pennarun, CEO and co-founder of Tailscale, discusses the fundamental vision behind Tailscale amidst the complexities of modern software development and internet architecture. He highlights the paradox of technological advancement, where increased computational power and developer accessibility have been accompanied by greater complexity and inefficiencies. Pennarun critiques the unnecessary focus on scalability, which often complicates simple tasks, and argues for a shift towards simplicity and connectivity, embodied by Tailscale's approach. Tailscale aims to simplify networking by enabling every device to have a unique IP, DNS name, and encrypted connection, essentially creating a "New Internet" that bypasses traditional centralization problems inherent in current internet structures. He presents Tailscale as a solution to the "rent" charged by cloud providers by reducing overhead and complexity, thus enabling developers to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure. The vision is to democratize internet connectivity, ensuring that everyone can participate in this new ecosystem, thus enabling the creation of applications that are currently unimaginable in the centralized internet environment.