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To operate a postal service, we need, as a strict minimum: - A workforce with a pulse. To operate a digital network, we need, as a strict minimum: - A consta

by ghssds 2y ago

To operate a postal service, we need, as a strict minimum: - A workforce with a pulse. To operate a digital network, we need, as a strict minimum: - A constant supply of electricity; - Lot of complex tools built far away from lot of exotic material from all around the world; - A workforce with lot of education and specialization. We're making our civilization brittle and call that progress.

loloquwowndueo 2y ago
There’s even a movie: the Postman :) (everybody hated that movie)
- ReptileMan 2y ago
  There is even better one - Postal Probably the only really good Uwe Boll movie.
GranularRecipe 2y ago
That's the trade-off between efficiency and resilience. Another example are the egg prices in US. The industrialisation of agriculture made it more brittle.
7952 2y ago
And that simple approach can be ridiculously scalable. Look at how mailing/parcels/printing could scale up during covid. Mail can put a document in the hands of tens of millions quickly.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  What happened during covid with the postal system? More people ordering online?
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    Did you completely miss that part? Ordering stuff from the internet went through the roof and the effect on physical shops is being felt even now with bankruptcies often being traced back to the bad years of the lockdowns.
amiga386 2y ago
I'm very much in favour of the postal service, but I don't think you're being fair in this comparison. To operate a postal service, you need a lot of sorting offices and service points (postboxes, post offices, letterboxes). Unless you have this infrastructure, I'm envisioning a postal service with a maximum capacity of whatever all its employees can hold in their hands at one time. And you need an addressing system and/or lots of people familiar with the local area, otherwise delivery is too unreliable for use. And you need an internal police force to stop your own workforce stealing people's goods -- the employees "with a pulse" but not "a lot of education" are especially bad for doing that. Meanwhile, in remote African villages, you buy things at the shop by sending a text message like "pay 32.10 to 67319" on your Nokia 3210 from 1999. It texts the vendor confirmation, it texts you back a receipt. The phones are battery powered, you charge them with a solar panel or a hand crank. The radio masts (and backend servers) that power this service are sometimes lacking electricity, but you just learn to go shopping when there's signal. Certainly, it wouldn't be easy to get back to having Nokia 3210s if some kind of global destruction happened. But the same is true of pen and paper -- we need industrial levels of production for paper, ink, pens (or quills), and good storage, for paper-based record keeping. Before that, we used cuneiform on clay tablets... I think we can assume that we'll keep our ability to manufacture basic ICs and remember how to do radio communication, we won't ever have to revert back to pre-Marconi days.

by ghssds 2y ago

loloquwowndueo 2y ago

There’s even a movie: the Postman :) (everybody hated that movie)

ReptileMan 2y ago
There is even better one - Postal Probably the only really good Uwe Boll movie.

GranularRecipe 2y ago

That's the trade-off between efficiency and resilience. Another example are the egg prices in US. The industrialisation of agriculture made it more brittle.

7952 2y ago

And that simple approach can be ridiculously scalable. Look at how mailing/parcels/printing could scale up during covid. Mail can put a document in the hands of tens of millions quickly.

Mashimo 2y ago
What happened during covid with the postal system? More people ordering online?
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  Did you completely miss that part? Ordering stuff from the internet went through the roof and the effect on physical shops is being felt even now with bankruptcies often being traced back to the bad years of the lockdowns.

amiga386 2y ago

I'm very much in favour of the postal service, but I don't think you're being fair in this comparison. To operate a postal service, you need a lot of sorting offices and service points (postboxes, post offices, letterboxes). Unless you have this infrastructure, I'm envisioning a postal service with a maximum capacity of whatever all its employees can hold in their hands at one time. And you need an addressing system and/or lots of people familiar with the local area, otherwise delivery is too unreliable for use. And you need an internal police force to stop your own workforce stealing people's goods -- the employees "with a pulse" but not "a lot of education" are especially bad for doing that. Meanwhile, in remote African villages, you buy things at the shop by sending a text message like "pay 32.10 to 67319" on your Nokia 3210 from 1999. It texts the vendor confirmation, it texts you back a receipt. The phones are battery powered, you charge them with a solar panel or a hand crank. The radio masts (and backend servers) that power this service are sometimes lacking electricity, but you just learn to go shopping when there's signal. Certainly, it wouldn't be easy to get back to having Nokia 3210s if some kind of global destruction happened. But the same is true of pen and paper -- we need industrial levels of production for paper, ink, pens (or quills), and good storage, for paper-based record keeping. Before that, we used cuneiform on clay tablets... I think we can assume that we'll keep our ability to manufacture basic ICs and remember how to do radio communication, we won't ever have to revert back to pre-Marconi days.