I have a friend who's been talking about this kind of thing for the past two decades so I've heard all of the possibilities, advantages and shortcomings of the various plans. One thing that always struck me, though, was the mono-themed mindset of almost all of these concepts. They seem to focus on the belief that one, and only one, "people's internet" can succeed. This is like saying only one browser can handle the internet, or only one game console can handle games. Most of these big plans fall apart when reality doesn't conform to their ideal schematics. Rather than admit their One True Plan is flawed they try to reshape the world. Example: a line-of-sight transmission array can't handle the mist rising from a rainforest so their solution is to genetically modify the trees to stop misting so much.
Seriously, this was their answer to the problem, and they were all MIT grad students plus a professor.
I think the best plan for a people's internet is one that incorporates an open standard that just focuses on the data being transferred. This way it doesn't matter if the people are using mesh networking, local fiber, cell towers or even homemade balloon satellites, the overall system can adapt and handle it.
And all it will take is one missile from the Chinese to blow those plans up real good. "Oops! Was that your satellite? We're sorry; we didn't mean to destroy it with our missile."
They're probably better off slapping a sky-high tariff on the hardware necessary to connect to the satellite, though. That way, they don't have to pretend they're stupid, there's nothing actionable about it, and they can periodically crack down on people who do have the modems, claim they're all pirated hardware, and aren't they nice people, protecting intellectual property rights.
Of course, I'm assuming that the Chinese government is capable of intelligent action, which may not be the case.
We should create a dozen or so "People's Internets", and have them interoperate. Two or three based on sat feeds. Meshes. Old-fashioned modem links. Stealth tunnels through existing links. Bounce a signal off the gorram *moon* (no, seriously!) for pity's sake.
If the fit hits the shan we'll probably lose a fair bit of our *instant* long-range commo. But we got by with delays of hours and days before... hell, we prosecuted a revolution to a successful conclusion when com delays were measured in WEEKS.
We just have to remember to be patient. And crafty. And don't depend on any one thing to get the job done.
Hell's bells. Do not underestimate the viability of RFC 1149! Or any other courier system, for that matter. That's how Australia used to get USENET for many years... batch up /var/spool/news, write it to magtape, put it on a 747, load it to the recipient system the next day, and re-use the tape to send the replies. Only, these days, you could stuff a micro-SD card just about anywhere.
*EG*
It's a grand idea and I'm highly in favor of it....
A novel is ~100,000 words. That's ~600,000 bytes at an average 5 characters--bytes--per word, plus one for the following space. ("640K ought to be enough for [any novel].") So a 32GB microSD card can fit about 50,000 novels. (32,000,000,000 / 600,000 = 53,333). Cut that in half to allow for cover art and formatting and so forth and that's still a bigger library than most people have in their house, especially because this doesn't include compression; English text compresses by about 10x.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 01:53 am (UTC)Seriously, this was their answer to the problem, and they were all MIT grad students plus a professor.
I think the best plan for a people's internet is one that incorporates an open standard that just focuses on the data being transferred. This way it doesn't matter if the people are using mesh networking, local fiber, cell towers or even homemade balloon satellites, the overall system can adapt and handle it.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 02:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 03:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 05:01 am (UTC)Why would they? A satellite-killing missile isn't expensive relative to China's GDP, but it isn't cheap. So what's the point?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 10:49 pm (UTC)They're probably better off slapping a sky-high tariff on the hardware necessary to connect to the satellite, though. That way, they don't have to pretend they're stupid, there's nothing actionable about it, and they can periodically crack down on people who do have the modems, claim they're all pirated hardware, and aren't they nice people, protecting intellectual property rights.
Of course, I'm assuming that the Chinese government is capable of intelligent action, which may not be the case.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 03:32 am (UTC)If the fit hits the shan we'll probably lose a fair bit of our *instant* long-range commo. But we got by with delays of hours and days before... hell, we prosecuted a revolution to a successful conclusion when com delays were measured in WEEKS.
We just have to remember to be patient. And crafty. And don't depend on any one thing to get the job done.
Hell's bells. Do not underestimate the viability of RFC 1149! Or any other courier system, for that matter. That's how Australia used to get USENET for many years... batch up /var/spool/news, write it to magtape, put it on a 747, load it to the recipient system the next day, and re-use the tape to send the replies. Only, these days, you could stuff a micro-SD card just about anywhere.
*EG*
It's a grand idea and I'm highly in favor of it....
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 04:43 am (UTC)I'm tempted to say that people can store a novel in a cellphone, but I'm not sure if I'm underestimating the novel or the cellphone.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 04:53 am (UTC)A novel is ~100,000 words. That's ~600,000 bytes at an average 5 characters--bytes--per word, plus one for the following space. ("640K ought to be enough for [any novel].") So a 32GB microSD card can fit about 50,000 novels. (32,000,000,000 / 600,000 = 53,333). Cut that in half to allow for cover art and formatting and so forth and that's still a bigger library than most people have in their house, especially because this doesn't include compression; English text compresses by about 10x.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-04 03:14 pm (UTC)Done this week (20110303 Th)
Date: 2011-03-11 06:37 am (UTC)