How about distributing all of our social network and other currently centralized services ala: the Freedom Box idea?

Alternately, replacing your router with something powerful enough to also run a Tor node, as mentioned earlier in the comments, or an Asterix server, or all of that together, would be a nice use.

The web is a way of linking computers together, social networks are a way for people to manage what information goes to which of the people they know in particular social contexts. The two are not the same. The web works just fine without any awareness of social contexts and social networks exist just fine without computers at all.

What we need is a way to make our digital communication tools more like our analog expectations about information management, which means designing systems that allow the controlled sharing of information about our lives with the right groups of people in private, not on personal webpages broadcasting to the world.

That could take many forms. I want a system that just handles making secure connections to my various contacts and parceling out what information gets sent to those contacts based on my history with them. Something like this: Freedom Box Schematic

I don't care if the phone makers want to rebirth the shareware market of the early '90s; eventually people will get tired of paying per feature and expect the good ones to be rolled into the core functionality of the OS or the larger applications they use, ala winzip.

What worries me about android is how all the phones they sell with it still need to be jail broken before you can make use of the freedoms in the free operating system. Surely that's a greater threat to your control over the software in your life than the fact that people are also willing to sell you closed software.

Eben Moglen wrote a much more interesting take on this six years ago called "The dotCommunist Manifesto" http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/dcm.html that is still worth reading. Though maybe read ""Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought" http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html instead.

Today's settlement between Microsoft and TomTom ends one phase of the community's response to Microsoft patent aggression, and begins another. On the basis of the information we have, we have no reason to believe that TomTom's settlement agreement with Microsoft violates the license on the kernel, Linux, or any other free software used in its products. The settlement neither implies that Microsoft patents are valid nor that TomTom's products were or are infringing.

The FAT filesystem patents on which Microsoft sued are now and have always been invalid patents in our professional opinion. SFLC remains committed to protecting the interests of our clients and the community. We will act forcefully to protect all users and developers of free software against further intimidation or interference from these patents.

SFLC, working with the Open Invention Network and the Linux Foundation, is pleased to participate in a coordinated, carefully graduated response on behalf of all the community's members to ongoing anti-competitive Microsoft conduct. We believe in strength through unity, and we think our community's unity in the face of these threats has helped to bring about Microsoft's quick settlement on all issues with TomTom.