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Well that might be an assumption that it will never be used. Maybe if people had it they would use it? But also I'm interested in if/whether this builds infras

Well that might be an assumption that it will never be used. Maybe if people had it they would use it? But also I'm interested in if/whether this builds infrastructure resilience as well. Would be interesting to see a well-thought cost/benefit analysis there. In America at least given that every ISP without exception is a giant piece of crap, mandating them to do things I'm going to generally approve of, especially if ISPs would be against it since I don't trust them whatsoever.

DeusExMachina 4y ago
Anecdote is not data, but I have a fiber connection and I pretty much never use the upload bandwidth I have.
- escapedmoose 4y ago
  Not today you don't, but imagine the technologies that could take hold if we could take for granted that people have decent upload as well as download. More real-time sharing/collaboration tools and decentralized social platforms would suddenly have a viable platform/market. And I’m sure there are other use cases I’m not considering.
  - theideaofcoffee 4y ago
    Thank you for seeing it that way, I like to think the same. It’s so sad and disheartening to see such a lack of imagination on a forum dedicated to new ideas in tech of all places. Making better things available just begets things that can take advantage of them. We’d all still be on POTS and dialup if it weren’t for some things pushing the status quo forward and people would still say you’ll never have a use for anything faster!
boring_twenties 4y ago
You say you prefer steak to cabbage, but maybe if you had more cabbage you would eat it? Therefore I think we should mandate 50% of your food purchases should be cabbage.
dahfizz 4y ago
Maybe if we mandated that everyone buy a hula hoop, people would find creative uses for them. That's not a great way to steer public policy.
- ericmay 4y ago
  Sure but that's also a bad way of thinking about it, because hula hoops aren't useful infrastructure
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Maybe if everyone had hula hoops people would figure out ways of making it useful infrastructure? Like attachments that turn them into umbrellas
    - ericmay 4y ago
      No we wouldn't so that's a bad idea. I get where you and others are trying to go with this, but it's just not a good argument and it doesn't translate at all into discussions about public policy. A more appropriate argument would be showing that it wouldn't be worth the cost or potential upside versus awful analogies. For example, you can talk in abstract about infrastructure resilience for example with decentralized networks or enabling internet services via fast connections. You can't make such an argument about hula hoops. Unfortunately this "I hate everything and everything sucks" mentality is becoming more prevalent.

DeusExMachina 4y ago

Anecdote is not data, but I have a fiber connection and I pretty much never use the upload bandwidth I have.

escapedmoose 4y ago
Not today you don't, but imagine the technologies that could take hold if we could take for granted that people have decent upload as well as download. More real-time sharing/collaboration tools and decentralized social platforms would suddenly have a viable platform/market. And I’m sure there are other use cases I’m not considering.
- theideaofcoffee 4y ago
  Thank you for seeing it that way, I like to think the same. It’s so sad and disheartening to see such a lack of imagination on a forum dedicated to new ideas in tech of all places. Making better things available just begets things that can take advantage of them. We’d all still be on POTS and dialup if it weren’t for some things pushing the status quo forward and people would still say you’ll never have a use for anything faster!

boring_twenties 4y ago

You say you prefer steak to cabbage, but maybe if you had more cabbage you would eat it? Therefore I think we should mandate 50% of your food purchases should be cabbage.

dahfizz 4y ago

Maybe if we mandated that everyone buy a hula hoop, people would find creative uses for them. That's not a great way to steer public policy.

ericmay 4y ago
Sure but that's also a bad way of thinking about it, because hula hoops aren't useful infrastructure
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Maybe if everyone had hula hoops people would figure out ways of making it useful infrastructure? Like attachments that turn them into umbrellas
  - ericmay 4y ago
    No we wouldn't so that's a bad idea. I get where you and others are trying to go with this, but it's just not a good argument and it doesn't translate at all into discussions about public policy. A more appropriate argument would be showing that it wouldn't be worth the cost or potential upside versus awful analogies. For example, you can talk in abstract about infrastructure resilience for example with decentralized networks or enabling internet services via fast connections. You can't make such an argument about hula hoops. Unfortunately this "I hate everything and everything sucks" mentality is becoming more prevalent.