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This could be just the natural evolution of the internet. Early on the internet needed a global scope to reach a critical mass. These days a critical mass ca

This could be just the natural evolution of the internet. Early on the internet needed a global scope to reach a critical mass. These days a critical mass can be reached within a trading zone with not much (percentage wise) value added outside of that. Also because equipment continues to get cheaper the size of a viable critical mass is shrinking.

billiam 8y ago
That this could be true makes me very sad.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  Every time I take a step back and look at what the internet is today I am simply amazed. That we could for once agree world wide on running this huge thing together involving almost every country in existence. Leaving (recent) developments like carrier grade Nat aside, we have a system that enables me to address anybody anywhere on this planet directly and send them a data packet that arrives within milliseconds. I mean we had the same with phones or mail before but its still different because the Internet is technically decentralized. Anyone could fuck around badly with BGP, but it's mostly OK. DNS is completely optional or you could roll your own, but everyone participates. With phones, you just need to agree on the country codes and everything that happens after that is everyone's own business. Mail even more so, you drop it off somewhere at the destination country and then it will involve varying amounts of manual processing to further distribute it. It just feels different.
  - workinthehead 8y ago
    I don't think it's accurate to consider the internet decentralized. Consider the entire domain name system is under ICANN control with a couple dozen root servers. Or the backbone which is almost entirely owned by Level3, Cogent, and a few other regional carriers. Redundant is nice, but it's not decentralized.
    - wsinks 8y ago
      Did you mean redundant (not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous) or resilient (able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions)? :)
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        redundant - /Engineering/ (of a component) not strictly necessary to functioning but included in case of failure in another component.
phicoh 8y ago
Trading zones are hugely interconnected. It is not as if trading zones are just isolated islands that produce everything and where people never leave the trading zone. Just like any established economy benefits from free trade (though slightly regulated to avoid dumping, etc.), established cultures benefit from free exchange of information (again slightly regulated to weed out some really bad stuff)
naravara 8y ago
>These days a critical mass can be reached within a trading zone with not much (percentage wise) value added outside of that. I'd argue it has more to do with language. The internet went global because English is a lingua franca across many different countries. There were lots of gains to be made by allowing it to work irrespective of national borders. In contrast, the vast vaaast majority of cultural and economic activity being done in a Chinese language is being done under the PRC. Taiwan’s not big enough to compare and neither are the Chinese communities in SE Asia, the US, Australia, etc. (and among that latter group, they do quite a bit of their interaction in English anyway). Eric Hobsbawm’s a political scientist who is considered an authority on the concept of Nationalism. One of his arguments was that the printing press created a sort of mass-media and standardization around specific languages that created a basis for people to develop a sense of community around what sort of vernacular language they read in. This was one of the progenitors behind the idea of “nationhood.” It’s why so many countries are constituted around common languages despite deep cultural divisions along other dimensions. It is possible the internet might break the same way, creating an “Anglosphere,” a “Sinosphere,” a “Francosphere,” etc.

billiam 8y ago

That this could be true makes me very sad.

iforgotpassword 8y ago
Every time I take a step back and look at what the internet is today I am simply amazed. That we could for once agree world wide on running this huge thing together involving almost every country in existence. Leaving (recent) developments like carrier grade Nat aside, we have a system that enables me to address anybody anywhere on this planet directly and send them a data packet that arrives within milliseconds. I mean we had the same with phones or mail before but its still different because the Internet is technically decentralized. Anyone could fuck around badly with BGP, but it's mostly OK. DNS is completely optional or you could roll your own, but everyone participates. With phones, you just need to agree on the country codes and everything that happens after that is everyone's own business. Mail even more so, you drop it off somewhere at the destination country and then it will involve varying amounts of manual processing to further distribute it. It just feels different.
- workinthehead 8y ago
  I don't think it's accurate to consider the internet decentralized. Consider the entire domain name system is under ICANN control with a couple dozen root servers. Or the backbone which is almost entirely owned by Level3, Cogent, and a few other regional carriers. Redundant is nice, but it's not decentralized.
  - wsinks 8y ago
    Did you mean redundant (not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous) or resilient (able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions)? :)
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      redundant - /Engineering/ (of a component) not strictly necessary to functioning but included in case of failure in another component.

phicoh 8y ago

Trading zones are hugely interconnected. It is not as if trading zones are just isolated islands that produce everything and where people never leave the trading zone. Just like any established economy benefits from free trade (though slightly regulated to avoid dumping, etc.), established cultures benefit from free exchange of information (again slightly regulated to weed out some really bad stuff)

naravara 8y ago

>These days a critical mass can be reached within a trading zone with not much (percentage wise) value added outside of that. I'd argue it has more to do with language. The internet went global because English is a lingua franca across many different countries. There were lots of gains to be made by allowing it to work irrespective of national borders. In contrast, the vast vaaast majority of cultural and economic activity being done in a Chinese language is being done under the PRC. Taiwan’s not big enough to compare and neither are the Chinese communities in SE Asia, the US, Australia, etc. (and among that latter group, they do quite a bit of their interaction in English anyway). Eric Hobsbawm’s a political scientist who is considered an authority on the concept of Nationalism. One of his arguments was that the printing press created a sort of mass-media and standardization around specific languages that created a basis for people to develop a sense of community around what sort of vernacular language they read in. This was one of the progenitors behind the idea of “nationhood.” It’s why so many countries are constituted around common languages despite deep cultural divisions along other dimensions. It is possible the internet might break the same way, creating an “Anglosphere,” a “Sinosphere,” a “Francosphere,” etc.