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I think there's an issue in your thinking: you're only approaching this situation in terms of technology. This is in fact the reason why the "solution" in weste
by rakoo 3y ago
I think there's an issue in your thinking: you're only approaching this situation in terms of technology. This is in fact the reason why the "solution" in western countries is open source and decentralization: we think it's a technology problem, so the solution is technology. But, like most things, it is inherently a social problem.
Cuba has been under embargo for decades now, and its internet has been heavily censored since; they haven't known how ingrained FAANG are, how ubiquitous Android and iOS and twitter and all those things are. For us, Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter; if there never was an ubiquitous Twitter to begin with, would we have created a heavily asymmetric client-server architecture ?
Sneakernet is the digital continuation of gathering with people and exchanging. Cuba already had an intranet between interconnected homes. The social shape always defines the communications shape, so the reason a sneakernet works there is not enough to say that a sneakernet would work here.
- oconnore 3y agoOn the contrary, I wrote this as a reflection on our tendency to focus on technology systems instead of social systems. Another way to think about it is that a social system is just a different type or level of technology that can exist independent of or in close harmony with a technical system. For example, the air transportation system is a complex social-technical system, where both the human patterns and the technology those humans use have evolved together over many years. Another example: a call tree, where the technical system is the phone line, and the social system is the training of people on who to call in the happy path and what to do if someone doesn't pick up.