3 ms·

This is a big one for me. But I think there is a missing level here. Local as in area, not just local to the machine. Municipal and Neighborhood level networks

This is a big one for me. But I think there is a missing level here. Local as in area, not just local to the machine. Municipal and Neighborhood level networks would solve a lot of problems inherent in the broader internet, as well as making solving problems as discussed by the OP easier. For example, it's a lot easier to trust your neighbor than someone on the internet (and better too). For one you can look them in the eyes and shake their hand, for another you are both governed by the same court (though this does make privacy more locally relevant). On the flip-side this means local people don't necessarily have to be great at the internet themselves to use these complex hosted programs. It's just another website rather than setting up a google docs server or using a git repo. Continuing, another problem it solves is local discoverability. There are a thousand products out there that do local services, from craigslist, on down to "local wikis". But these services don't often care about your community, and it can be hard to know what other people are using (separating local efforts across a global network). Putting them all on a local network, with a local index (and search engines) allows better discoverability nearby (especially if portals into neighboring communities can be connected, eventually perhaps into a federation of sorts), but also services that are oriented to local needs (and issues and regulation). I'm not saying this would replace the internet. Obviously not. But it would provide a better, safer, and more useful "local layer" of the internet to go to first (to say nothing of the social media security and child safety aspects). That also happened to be faster and more resilient (doesn't go down when the internet does). The problem of course is shit ISPs, though this is why the MeshNet people do what they do. And having applications and a community ready for it. The technology (and culture) would also be useful for communities that can't participate in the global network, from isolated communities (either due to poverty, authoritarinism, or remoteness) to future ones (spaceships, remote colonies). Just a thought.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Reminds me of when broadband was rolled out in Romania in the early millennium, and the local ISP would give you details for a server where you could share films and music with people from the same city.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Local seems like an early internet drawing board idea that didn't take off and got forgotten, it practically sounds like something you could gaslight quite a few people into developing fake memories with a few consistent looking artifacts from the BBS era. In fact much if it is a reinvention of BBS essentially as it had soft localness due to long distance charges for phone calls for modem connections. Mail readers were an option to minimize BBS connection time. Neighbor trust wouldn't last long if it even existed in the first place as soon as easy targets getting hacked became a thing. Most people leave their routers secured by default and even ISPs who use them to distribute wifi "publically" are supposed to leave them secure indicating the preferred level of local network interaction is generally "none". The locality is a worst of both worlds, arbitrarily limiting discovery if they want to see and be seen and not providing any security as anyone could bridge access within or likely spoof an identity. It seems like something which would rapidly wind up redudant for all terrestrial applications even if it existed earlier. Distant ones I suspect would either tolerate the higher latency or maintain mirrors or caches - which would likely wind up a subset of the content which doesn't depend upon being current and would probaby become a format which doesn't mind the "necroposting" and delayed reactions as you get hours or days later space responses.
- SolarNet 6y ago
  > Neighbor trust You misunderstood this. My trust of neighbors is more social and less technical. I am less likely to run into bots (and predators) on social media because local administration means those people must be within the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. > The locality is a worst of both worlds, arbitrarily limiting discovery if they want to see and be seen and not providing any security as anyone could bridge access within or likely spoof an identity. Part of the point would be to disallow this bridging. If you wanna be seen on both the internet and locally, that would be easy to do. But bridging outsiders into the local network means taking responsibility for them and their actions. And no one would want to do that unless it's people they know.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

Reminds me of when broadband was rolled out in Romania in the early millennium, and the local ISP would give you details for a server where you could share films and music with people from the same city.

Nasrudith 6y ago

Local seems like an early internet drawing board idea that didn't take off and got forgotten, it practically sounds like something you could gaslight quite a few people into developing fake memories with a few consistent looking artifacts from the BBS era. In fact much if it is a reinvention of BBS essentially as it had soft localness due to long distance charges for phone calls for modem connections. Mail readers were an option to minimize BBS connection time. Neighbor trust wouldn't last long if it even existed in the first place as soon as easy targets getting hacked became a thing. Most people leave their routers secured by default and even ISPs who use them to distribute wifi "publically" are supposed to leave them secure indicating the preferred level of local network interaction is generally "none". The locality is a worst of both worlds, arbitrarily limiting discovery if they want to see and be seen and not providing any security as anyone could bridge access within or likely spoof an identity. It seems like something which would rapidly wind up redudant for all terrestrial applications even if it existed earlier. Distant ones I suspect would either tolerate the higher latency or maintain mirrors or caches - which would likely wind up a subset of the content which doesn't depend upon being current and would probaby become a format which doesn't mind the "necroposting" and delayed reactions as you get hours or days later space responses.

SolarNet 6y ago
> Neighbor trust You misunderstood this. My trust of neighbors is more social and less technical. I am less likely to run into bots (and predators) on social media because local administration means those people must be within the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. > The locality is a worst of both worlds, arbitrarily limiting discovery if they want to see and be seen and not providing any security as anyone could bridge access within or likely spoof an identity. Part of the point would be to disallow this bridging. If you wanna be seen on both the internet and locally, that would be easy to do. But bridging outsiders into the local network means taking responsibility for them and their actions. And no one would want to do that unless it's people they know.