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I could also see this in a suburban neighborhood. Instead of buying "internet" from your ISP, you could buy "computing" from them. Every block has a server cabi

I could also see this in a suburban neighborhood. Instead of buying "internet" from your ISP, you could buy "computing" from them. Every block has a server cabinet, with fiber video links to each house. Then your ISP is responsible for maintaining your OS. This could go either way: given the current state of American ISP's, it could be a disaster. But in a "perfect world", it would "just work" because as soon as your OS went down, the tech would be dispached to remote in and fix it, or drive out there and replace a blade in the server. In aggregate, this would drive up demand and evolve a highly reliable OS. In that case everyone should have a highly reliable service (albeit with privacy concerns), as long as the video could keep up.

contingencies 10y ago
Not keen on this idea... I think individual independence in computing hardware is a very important social and technological feature against fascist technocracy. I think sharing infrastructure at the office level could make sense, or within a home, but not across a neighborhood with current technology. While you may be right that overall availability would increase under such a design, I don't really think reliability is a problem for most people right now. Maybe it would work in some special scenarios though? For example it may be a viable model to provide 'basic service' computing to individual homes within a low income / government supported housing environment, prisons, or hotels. (Fun fact: In mainland Chinese hotels, they often provide computers specifically so that people can watch porn.)